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FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 


iw^ 


FOUR    AND 
TWENTY     MINDS 


ESSAYS 
BY 

GIOVANNI  PAPINI 


SELECTED  AND  TRANSLATED 

BY 
ERNEST  HATCH  WILKINS 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


7M 

f 


Copyright,  1922, 
Br  THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  COMPANY 


PRINTED   IN   THE  UWITED   STATES   OF    AMBKIOA 


PREFACE 

The  first  ten  of  the  essays  here  translated  are 
from  Papini's  2 A  Cervelli  ("Four  and  Twenty 
Minds"),  the  next  six  from  his  Stroncature 
("Slashings"),  and  the  last  eight  from  his  Testi- 
monianze  ( "Testimonies" ) . 

In  the  Preface  to  24-  Cervelli,  Papini  writes : 

These  essays  deal  with  twenty-four  men — poets,  phi- 
losophers, imaginary  beings,  scientists,  mystics,  painters — 
grouped  without  regard  to  logical  classifications  or  to  their 
relative  importance.  Some  of  the  essays  are  tributes  of 
affection,  some  are  slashings ;  some  reveal  neglected  great- 
ness, others  demolish  undeserved  reputations.  Some  are 
long,  and  represent  careful  study,  others  are  brief  and 
slight.  ...  I  have  surveyed  these  four  and  twenty  souls 
not  with  the  scrupulous  exactitude  of  the  pure  scholar, 
nor  with  the  definitive  cocksureness  of  the  professional 
critic,  but  as  a  man  seeking  to  penetrate  deeply  into  the 
lives  of  other  men  in  order  to  discern  and  to  reveal  their 
lovableness  or  their  hatefulness.  The  essays,  then,  are  for 
the  most  part  impassioned,  subjective,  partial — lyric,  in  a 
sense — and  not  critical. 

These  essays  had  been  written  between  1902 
and  1912:  24  Cervelli  was  pubHshed  in  the  latter 
year.  The  book  proved  very  successful;  and  in 
1916  Papini  brought  out  a  second  set  of  twenty- 
four  similar  essays,  to  which  he  gave  the  title 
Slashings.    In  this  volume,  as  the  title  indicates, 


4b6ii' 


vi  PREFACE 

attack  and  demolition  have  a  larger  place,  and  the 
style  is  at  times  vituperative  in  the  extreme. 
Many  of  the  essays,  nevertheless,  are  friendly 
and  constructive.  Papini's  caricature  of  himself 
(from  Testimonies),  which  appears  as  the  last 
essay  in  the  present  translation,  was  written  soon 
after  the  publication  of  Slashings,  and  reflects 
the  sensation  made  by  that  book. 

Testimonies,  published  in  1918,  is  a  third  set 
of  twenty-four  essays.  They  are  of  the  same 
general  character  as  those  contained  in  Slashings, 
though  the  part  of  invective  is  somewhat  less,  and 
the  tone  of  the  book  as  a  whole  is  quieter. 

In  selecting  the  essays  to  be  included  in  this 
translation  I  have  chosen,  naturally,  those  which 
seemed  to  hold  greatest  interest  for  American 
readers.  Most  of  the  persons  discussed  are  fig- 
ures of  world-wide  significance ;  in  the  few  other 
cases  there  has  seemed  to  be  something  of  special 
value  in  the  content  of  the  essay  itself. 

The  translation  is  deliberately  free ;  for  I  have 
endeavored  to  find  the  true  English  expression 
for  Papini's  thought. 

E.  H.  W. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  P^a^ 

I  The  Unknown  Man 1 

II  Dante 7 

III  Leonardo  da  Vinci 15 

IV  Leon  Battista  Alberti 2G 

V  Berkeley 3G 

VI  Spencer Gt 

VII  F.  C.  S.  Schiller 82 

VIII  Hegel 80 

IX  Nietzsche HI' 

^    X  Walt  Whitman 125 

XI  Croce 163 

XII  Armando  Spadini 175 

XIII  Hamlet 18G 

XIV  Remy  de  Gourmont 198 

XV  Ardengo  Soffici 209 

^  XVI  Swift 219 

XVII  Carolina  Invernizio 228 

XVIII  Alfredo  Oriani 238 

XIX  William  Tell 252 

XX  Don   Quixote 256 

XXI  Kwang-Tse 276 

XXII  Calderon 296 

XXIII  Maeterlinck 308 

XXIV  Giovanni   Papini 318 

vii 


FOUR  AND  TWENTY 
MINDS 


THE  UNKNOWN  MAN 

Modern  critics  have  the  most  unfortunate  cus- 
tom of  discussing  only  men  who  are  well  known, 
men  of  whose  existence  they  are  absolutely  sure. 
The  result  is  that  no  one  hitherto  has  taken  the 
trouble  to  write  the  biography  of  the  Unknown 
Man.  I  am  not  referring  to  the  ordinary  un- 
known person  who  may  at  any  time  be  brought 
into  the  commonplace  class  of  the  known  and  the 
recognized.  I  mean  the  Unknown  Man  himself, 
the  authentic  Unknown  Man  whom  nobody 
knows. 

The  critics,  one  and  all,  wTite  only  about  the 
prominent,  the  illustrious,  or  at  least  about  be- 
ings known  to  the  police  and  listed  in  the  direc- 
tories. Far  be  it  from  them  to  waste  ink  for 
a  man  without  a  name — for  a  man  who  does  not 
even  possess  one  of  those  trivial  pairs  of  name* 
1 


2       FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

which  the  papers  print  just  once:  in  the  column 
of  death  notices. 

What  if  they  ask:  "How  can  we  write  the 
life  of  the  Unknown  Man,  since  the  very  fact 
that  he  is  unknown  prevents  us  from  knowing 
anything  about  him"?  A  foolish  excuse  I  The 
most  highly  educational  biographies  are  those  of 
men  of  whom  little  or  nothing  is  known.  Those 
are  the  books  that  set  forth  the  human  ideal, 
that  tell  us  what  a  man  ought  to  be. 

The  critics  may  go  their  way,  and  I'll  go  mine. 
And  you  will  see  that  I  do  not  need  to  resort  to 
fiction. 

If  it  be  true  that  men  are  known  by  their 
works,  how  much  we  know  of  the  Unknown  Man! 
I  might  maintain  that  he  has  been  the  most  im- 
portant personage  in  history,  the  greatest  hero 
of  humanity.  If  you  don't  believe  it,  I  don't 
mind.  But  I  do  ask  that  you  lend  me  your  ears, 
you  slaves  of  the  known,  you  devotees  of  the 
catalogue ! 

The  Unknown  ]Mun  is  very  ancient.  He  ap- 
peared, indeed,  in  the  ^rst  human  tribe.  In  the 
earliest  times  he  busied  himself  chiefly  with  chem- 
istry and  metallurgy.  He  invented  the  wheel, 
and  discovered  the  use  of  iron.  Later  he  con- 
cerned himself  with  clothes,  devised  money,  and 
started  agriculture.  But  he  soon  tired  of  these 
mn.tcxial  interests,  and  became  a  poet.    Through- 


THE  UNKNOWN  MAN  3 

out  the  centuries  he  has  traveled  hither  and  yon. 
He  conceived  the  myths  of  our  reHgions;  he 
fashioned  the  Vedas  and  the  Orjihic  hymns;  he 
wove  the  legends  of  the  north;  he  improvised 
the  themes  of  folk  poetry.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
he  carved  the  numberless  statues  of  the  Roman- 
esque and  the  Gotliic  cathedrals,  and  covered 
chapel  and  refectory  walls  with  unsigned  fres- 
coes. Then,  too,  he  composed  tales  and  legends : 
all  those  great  books  that  bear  no  author's  name 
are  his. 

But  with  the  approach  of  modern  times,  when 
the  stupid  craze  for  signature  came  in,  the  Un- 
known INIan  ceased  his  activity,  and  was  content 
to  rest.  An  immense  throng  of  vain  fellows,  of 
men  who  had  a  name  or  sought  to  make  a  name, 
began  to  paint,  invent,  carve,  write.  They  had 
less  genius  than  the  Unknown  IMan,  and  they 
had  also  less  modesty:  they  proclaimed  to  all 
the  winds  that  they,  and  none  but  they,  had  done 
these  things.  They  worked  not  only  for  their 
own  joy  or  for  others'  benefit,  but  that  the  world 
might  know  that  they,  and  none  but  they,  had 
done  the  work. 

But  the  Unknown  Man  did  not  remain  per- 
manently inactive.  With  the  coming  of  democ- 
racy he  turned  to  politics.  The  great  modern 
revolutions  have  been  due  to  him.  The  English 
Puritans,    the    American    Revolutionists,    the 


4       FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

French  Sansculottes,  the  Italian  Volunteers  were 
his  followers.  Under  the  names  of  Mob  and 
People  he  frightened  kings,  overthrew  dema- 
gogues, and  resolved  to  turn  the  world  upside- 
down. 

But  these  great  concerns  do  not  dim  his  mem- 
ory of  the  good  old  times.  Often,  deep  in 
thought,  he  walks  through  ancient  streets  which 
he  laid  out,  stops  to  delight  in  the  simple  forms 
of  vases  such  as  he  first  modeled,  and  now  and 
again  turns  into  some  pleasant  courtyard,  re- 
membering the  distant  time  when  he,  in  his  child- 
hood, invented  houses,  on  the  model  of  woods 
and  caves. 

He  lives  still,  and  he  cannot  die.  The  fright- 
ful progress  of  pride  and  of  advertisement  will 
limit  his  activity  more  and  more;  but  he  will  be 
forever  what  silent  men  were  to  Carlyle:  the 
salt  of  the  earth.  Now  and  then,  to  tell  the  truth, 
I  am  moved  to  fear  that  his  enforced  idleness 
and  the  trend  of  the  times  have  turned  him  into 
evil  ways.  When  the  newspapers  attribute  thefts 
or  assaults  to  "the  usual  unknown  parties"  I  am 
always  a  little  afraid  that  he  is  involved.  But 
that  plural  reassures  me. 

Judging  from  his  portraits,  I  should  not  think 
him  capable  of  baseness.  Have  you  not  noticed, 
in  the  great  galleries,  those  canvases  which  cata- 
logues and  labels  call  "Portrait  of  an  Unknown 


THE  UNKNOWN  MAN  5 

Man?"  These  portraits  are  all  different,  to  be 
sure,  and  pedantic  critics  maintain  that  they  rep- 
resent different  persons  not  as  yet  identified. 
But  I  have  no  use  for  the  critics,  and  I  have  per- 
fect faith  in  the  multiplicity  of  my  hero's  faces. 
How  noble  and  how  beautiful  his  countenance! 
Sometimes  he  is  represented  as  a  gentleman  deep 
in  thought.  Sometimes  he  is  a  pale  youth  seen 
in  profile  against  a  window.  Sometimes  he  is  a 
wise,  mature  man  toying  with  a  glove  or  a  falcon. 
But  you  can  always  see  in  his  face  that  aristoc- 
racy of  soul  and  that  natural  reserve  which  have 
made  him  unwilling  to  let  his  name  be  trumpeted 

by  the  vulgar  mouth  of  fame. 

****** 

You  may  think  that  I  am  jesting,  after  the 
fashion  of  Swift  or  Carlyle.  No :  I  desire,  seri- 
ously, to  suggest  a  matter  for  serious  thought. 
We  are  in  general  too  much  inclined  to  attribute 
importance  to  all  that  has  a  name,  to  all  that  is 
legitimized  by  a  signature,  by  print,  by  foolscap. 
We  fail  to  realize  that  most  of  what  we  call 
civilization  has  been  produced  by  people  of  whose 
lives  and  personalities  we  know  absolutely  noth- 
ing. Those  who  remain  anonymous  and  unknown 
have  done  far  more  for  us  than  all  the  men  whose 
fame  fills  biographical  dictionaries.  The  fairest 
fancies,  the  simplest  melodies,  the  most  endur- 
ing phrases,  the  fundamental  inventions,  are  the 


6       FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

work  of  the  Unknown  Man,  to  whom  historians 
and  panegyrists  give  no  heed. 

We  are  guilty,  in  this  case,  of  an  ingratitude 
reenforced  by  laziness.  We  remember  things 
more  readily  when  they  have  a  name ;  it  is  easier 
to  be  grateful  when  we  have  before  us  a  definite 
being  to  whom  we  may  address  our  praise,  in 
whom  we  may  take  pride.  The  Unknown  Man, 
who  thought  and  wrought  without  labeling  his 
works,  without  sending  communiques  to  the  pa- 
pers, is  too  evanescent,  too  easily  forgotten.  All 
men,  Jews  and  Protestants  included,  must  have 
images  when  they  attempt  adoration.  If  they  do 
not  know  the  name  and  the  features  of  the  man 
who  has  achieved,  they  cannot  fix  their  thought 
upon  him,  they  cannot  direct  toward  him  the 
current  of  their  affection  or  their  enthusiasm. 
It  is  our  ineradicable  laziness  that  has  led  us  to 
forget  the  Unknown  Man,  the  age-long  bene- 
factor of  the  human  race. 

In  our  public  squares  we  behold — unfor- 
tunately— numberless  equestrian  or  pedestrian 
statues  of  men  who  have  merely  written  a  tire- 
some tragedy  or  given  a  lucky  sabre-thrust.  The 
Greeks  had  at  least  the  profound  and  prudent 
idea  of  raising  an  altar  to  the  Unknown  God. 
Should  not  we  forgetful  moderns  erect  a  monu- 
ment to  the  Unknown  Man? 


II 

DANTE 


The  Divine  Comedy  is  not  yet  complete. 
When  the  disdainful  poet  wrote  that  last  fair 
starry  line,  he  had  merely  finished  the  funda- 
mental theme  on  which  other  men  were  to  exe- 
cute complicated  variations.  For  a  great  book 
is  only  an  initial  motif,  a  starting  point  from 
which  later  generations  proceed  to  develop  all 
the  possible  themes  of  a  perennial  symphony. 
Every  man  who  reads  a  great  work,  even  though 
he  be  poor  in  spirit,  adds  to  it  some  ni^ning, 
some  pause,  soihe  intonation  of  his  own;  some- 
thing of  what  he  feels  enters  into  it  and  is  borne 
on  to  those  who  are  to  read  thereafter. 

The  greatest  books,  then,  such  as  the  Divine 
Comedy,  are  to  be  considered  not  as  mere  per- 
sonal creations,  but  rather  as  artistic  structures 
of  a  special  type  in  which  an  original  central 
block  has  been  so  enlarged,  by  the  addition  of 
stratum  after  stratum,  that  the  primitive  form 

7 


8       FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

is  wholly  changed.  Even  if  we  read  the  Corn- 
media  without  a  commentary,  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  forget  all  that  has  been  said  of  Dante, 
all  the  interpretations  of  his  vast  work.  We  may 
indeed  forget  the  marginalia  of  pedants,  the 
minutiae  of  casuists,  the  erudition  of  philologians, 
the  glosses  of  fanatics;  but  we  cannot  forget  the 
conceptions  expressed,  and  thus  imposed  upon 
the  sacred  poem,  by  certain  men  of  outstand- 
ing intellectual  power.  We  view  Dante  through 
them  as  we  view  the  heavens  through  Newton, 
and  God  through  Dionysius  the  Ai-eopagite. 

And  we  may  do  better  than  forget:  we  may 
continue  the  work  of  such  collaborators  of  Dante. 
It  is  indeed  our  proper  task  to  find  a  new  inter- 
pretation of  his  soul  and  of  his  work,  an  inter- 
pretation more  rich  in  truth  than  all  those  we 
have  inherited.  In  a  recent  book  I  asserted  that 
modern  Italy  cannot  understand  Dante — and  cer- 
tain scholars  took  offense  at  this  simple  state- 
ment of  fact.  Yet  if  they  would  sincerely  ex- 
amine their  own  consciences  they  would  be  obliged 
to  agree  with  me  that  the  so-called  "cult  of 
Dante"  is  primarily  a  pretext  for  the  composi- 
tion of  works  of  criticism,  or  history,  or  philology, 
in  which  there  is  no  authentic  trace  of  a  true 
understanding  of  Dante.  Critics  in  general  study 
Dante  just  as  they  might  study  an  obscure  mock- 
heroic  poet  or  an  insignificant  question  of  Greek 


DANTE  9 

>epigraphy.  In  the  presence  of  one  of  the  most 
terrible  creations  of  man  they  have  not  trembled. 
But  my  purpose  is  not  merely  to  say  that 
Dante  is  not  rightly  understood,  that  men  fail  to 
comprehend  his  apostleship  of  moral  grandeur. 
I  desire  to  indicate  a  new  conception  of  his  work, 
a  new  view-point  from  which  we  may  behold  his 
great  figure  towering  against  the  background 
of  eternity. 


II 


The  best  proof  of  my  thesis  that  the  modern 
world  is  in  general  unable  truly  to  understand 
the  Divine  Oomedy  lies  in  the  limited  nature  of 
the  ideas  regarding  Dante  which  have  been  held 
by  certain  very  intelligent  men.  Some,  like  Car- 
lyle,  have  seen  in  him  a  prophet;  some,  like 
Mazzini,  an  apostle  of  Italian  unity;  some,  like 
Rossetti,  an  adept  in  strange  mysteries;  some, 
like  Aroux,  a  heretic  and  precursor  of  the  Refor- 
mation; some,  like  De  Sanctis,  simply  a  very 
great  artist.  But  all  such  men  are  merely  at- 
tributing to  Dante  purposes  and  qualities  which 
many  other  writers  have  possessed  as  well.  And 
we  all  tend  to  forget  that  Dante  was  something 
apart,  a  man  unique.  We  assign  him  to  one 
of  the  several  classes  into  which  we  so  readily 
divide  the  host  of  the  workers  of  the  spirit.    Be- 


10     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

fore  his  birth  and  since  his  death  there  have  been 
great  poets,  great  prophets,  great  reformers ;  and 
we  are  content  to  ask  to  which  of  these  groups 
he  belongs,  and  to  what  extent  and  in  what  way 
he  is  superior  to  his  fellows  in  that  group. 

But  to  my  mind  Dante  was  great  because  he 
claimed  and  fulfilled  a  function  claimed  by  no 
other  man  before  or  since  his  time.  He  is  indeed 
a  great  poet  and  a  great  mystic,  but  that  which 
differentiates  him  from  all  other  men  is  not  his 
poetry  nor  his  mysticism.  Art,  theology,  poli- 
tics, are  for  him  means  subordinate  to  one  su- 
preme purpose :  he  sought  to  be  the  vicar  of  God 
on  earth. 

Dante  was  a  sincere  son  of  the  Church,  and 
for  that  very  reason  he  was  conscious  of  the 
enormous  decadence  of  the  Papacy.  The  con- 
cept of  the  Pope  as  the  vicar  of  Christ  was  a 
noble  one:  had  it  been  conserved  in  its  purity 
there  would  have  been  nothing  strange  in  the 
lordship  which  the  Pope  sought  to  exercise,  by 
the  sheer  power  of  his  word,  over  all  the  king- 
doms of  the  earth.  But  the  Papacy  itself  had 
become  earthy,  had  fed  on  gold,  had  sold  its 
right  to  the  spiritual  dominion  of  the  entire 
world  that  it  might  gain  material  dominion  over 
one  small  portion  of  the  world.  It  had  rendered 
itself  hable  to  judgment,  to  condemnation,  and 
had  lost  thereby  its  tfue  raison  d'etre,  its  mis- 


DANTE  11 

sion  as  the  supreme  judge  of  men.  The  Popes, 
faithless  to  Hun  who  gave  them  their  commis- 
sion, could  no  longer  claim  to  be  His  represen- 
tatives on  earth. 

In  the  soul  of  Dante  there  rose  instinctively 
the  desire  to  take  the  place  of  these  faithless  vic- 
ars, and  to  judge  them  as  God  Himself  would 
have  judged  them.  He  desired  to  exercise  to 
the  full  extent  of  his  power  that  judicial  author- 
ity which  the  Popes  had  forgotten.  But  he  was 
none  the  less  resolved  to  remain  within  the 
Church,  since  for  all  its  decadence  it  still  repre- 
sented the  unbroken  Christian  tradition.  He  had 
no  wish  to  become  the  leader  of  a  revolt,  or  to 
overthrow  the  existing  hierarchy.  He  chose  the 
instrument  which  was  most  familiar  to  him — 
art — and  composed  a  poem  which  is  not,  as  cer- 
tain critics  maintain,  an  anticlerical  pamphlet, 
but  rather  a  true  actus  pontificalis. 

But  if  we  are  thoroughly  to  understand  the 
significance  of  this  act  of  his  we  must  realize 
that  his  idea  of  divine  vicarage  was  very  differ- 
ent from  that  represented  by  the  Roman  tra- 
dition. The  Catholic  church  was  primarily  a 
continuation  of  the  apostolic  service  of  Christ, 
and  the  Pope,  as  vicar  of  Christ,  devoted  him- 
self especially  to  the  spiritual  education  of  men. 
The  institution  of  the  Mass  as  a  daily  symbol  of 
man's   redemption   from   sin,   the   confessional, 


12     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

the  propagation  of  the  faith  among  the 
heathen — all  these  are  proofs  of  the  pri- 
marily pedagogical  and  moralizing  purpose 
of  the  church.  The  church  was  the  teacher 
of  the  world,  and  in  Christ  the  church  saw  pri- 
marily the  teacher  of  moral  and  eternal  truths. 

Dante,  on  the  other  hand,  had  in  mind  a  part 
of  the  doctrine  of  Christ  to  which  the  Popes  had 
given  relatively  slight  importance:  the  idea  of 
the  Last  Judgment.  God  is  not  only  the  God 
who  enlightens  and  saves  mankind,  but  the  God 
who,  on  a  terrible  distant  day,  will  judge  the 
quick  and  the  dead.  The  idea  of  the  Last  Judg- 
ment, so  tragically  expressed  throughout  the 
^liddle  Ages  in  hymns,  in  mosaic,  and  in  paint- 
ing, had  not  been  hitherto  associated  with  the 
idea  of  the  Papacy. 

Dante,  aware  that  God  is  not  only  a  teacher 
but  a  judge,  and  believing  it  necessary  that  God 
should  have  a  vicar  on  earth,  chose  to  represent 
Him  rather  as  judge  than  as  teacher.  In  this 
intent  he  conceived  the  Divine  Comedy,  which  is, 
in  fact,  an  anticipatory  Last  Judgment. 

Dante  knows  that  the  world  has  not  come  to 
an  end,  that  the  roll  of  the  dead  is  not  yet  com- 
plete; but  he  takes  all  peoples,  all  generations, 
from  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  to  the  leaders  of  his 
own  day,  and  distributes  them  in  the  three  realms 
even  as  God  would  have  done.     He  takes  the 


DANTE  13 

place  of  God,  forestalls  the  great  Assize,  exalts 
to  the  spheres  or  thrusts  down  into  infernal  cav- 
erns the  souls  of  cowardly  Popes,  proud  emper- 
ors, rapacious  captains,  enamored  ladies,  saints 
and  warriors,  hermits  and  thinkers,  poets  and 
politicians.  No  one  is  overlooked.  Beside  the 
queens  of  the  thirteenth  century  appear  the 
women  of  the  Old  Testament;  beside  the  consuls 
of  Rome,  the  painters  of  Tuscany.  The  king  but 
newly  dead  converses  with  the  Greek  or  Roman 
poet;  the  Christian  martyr  with  the  Florentine 
warrior. 

Each  has  his  penalty  or  his  reward.  Dante 
walks  among  them  all  in  the  guise  of  a  spectator, 
but  he  is  in  reality  their  judge.  The  Divine 
Co7nedy  is  the  Dies  irae  of  a  great  spirit  which 
cannot  wait  for  the  manifestation  of  divine  wrath, 
and  assigns  a  place  provisionally  to  every  man. 
It  is  an  incomplete  Vale  of  Jehoshaphat,  in  which 
all  the  dead  are  gathered,  while  beyond  the  dread 
hills  the  renewal  of  life  goes  on. 

Dante  felt  that  his  genius  was  a  divine  inves- 
titure which  gave  him  the  right  to  judge  those 
who  had  lived  before  his  time.  He  was  so  sure 
of  being  a  better  representative  of  God  than  the 
venal  priests  and  intriguing  Popes  of  his  experi- 
ence that  he  did  not  hesitate  to  thrust  into  Hell 
men  who  passed  themselves  off  before  their  fel- 
low men  as  vicars  and  ministers  of  God.    Thus 


14     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

from  a  lofty  throne,  more  enduring  than  bronze, 
the  Florentine  poet  pronounces  terrible  condem- 
nations which  have  not  yet  been  canceled.  He 
seems  verily,  by  the  power  of  his  art,  to  compel 
God  to  ratify  his  sentences. 


Ill 


Only  one  man  since  Dante's  time  has  achieved 
a  conception  of  equal  grandeur — and  that  man 
is  Michelangelo.  The  Sistine  Chapel  is  the  only 
worthy  illustration  of  the  Divine  Comedy. 

I  have  sometimes  imagined  a  tremendous 
drama  of  the  Last  Judgment,  the  words  to  be 
written  by  Dante,  the  music  to  be  composed  by 
Palestrina — save  that  for  the  trumpets  of  the 
angel  who  is  to  wake  the  dead  (think  of  the  sound 
of  trumpets  that  will  wake  even  from  the  sleep 
of  death!)  I  should  have  sought  the  aid  of 
Richard  Wagner. 

Should  there  come  to  the  throne  of  St.  Peter 
a  Pope  with  daring  and  initiative,  he  might  well 
cover  the  quattrocentist  frescoes  on  the  side  walls 
of  the  Sistine  Chapel — frescoes  that  yield  but 
incidental  charm — and  in  their  place  inscribe,  in 
fair  red  characters,  the  whole  Divine  Comedy,  in 
the  presence  of  its  only  worthy  interpretation: 
the  Last  Judgment  of  Michelangelo. 


Ill 

LEONARDO  DA  VINCI 


'Philosophieren  ist  vivificieren." 

NOVALIS. 


Historians  affirm  with  a  surprising  unanimity 
that  in  the  Year  of  Grace  1452  there  was  bom 
in  the  town  of  Vinci  a  child  who  received  the  fair 
name  of  Leonardo,  and  became  famous  through- 
out Italy  and  beyond  the  Alps.  And  they  go  on 
to  tell  how  he  was  taken  to  Florence  and  appren- 
ticed to  Andrea  del  Verrocchio,  how  he  began  to 
paint  with  marvelous  skill,  how  he  went  to  the 
court  of  Milan — and  many  other  things  which 
the  reader  surely  knows  much  better  than  I.  If 
he  doesn't,  he  may  find  them  duly  set  forth  by 
the  said  historians — from  the  beloved  unknown 
writer  of  the  Gaddi  manuscript,  or  the  popular 
Vasari  (equally  famous  for  his  horrible  frescoes 
and  his  extraordinary  misinformation),  down  to 
the  latest  biographers  of  Leonardo,  whom  I  will 
not  even  name,  lest  I  seem  too  erudite. 

15 


16     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

But  my  Leonardo  is  not  the  Leonardo  of  the 
historians.  Their  Leonardo,  Ser  Pietro's  son, 
who  lived  his  mortal  life  from  1452  to  1519,  I 
gladly  leave  to  all  those  honest  men  who  turn  to 
history  for  facts,  and  worship  documentary  evi- 
dence. For  myself  I  have  fashioned  another  and 
a  different  Leonardo.  And  since  he  is  my  cre- 
ation, I  love  him  the  more,  like  a  dutiful  father, 
and  am  very  fond  of  his  company. 

I  don't  mean  to  say  that  the  Leonardo  of  the 
historians  is  to  be  forgotten.  If  I  had  had  the 
luck  to  live  in  his  generation,  it  would  not  have 
been  hard  for  me  to  regard  him  as  the  dearest 
of  my  friends.  And  since  he  loved  the  spirits 
of  those  who  seek,  perhaps  he  would  have  taken 
me  with  him  on  some  of  his  thoughtful  walks 
among  those  Tuscan  hills  that  gladden  his  can- 
vases with  their  pale  azure.  And  he  would  have 
talked  to  me,  in  his  clear,  rich  voice,  of  his  ana- 
tomical researches  and  his  architectural  plans. 
Some  day,  perhaps,  he  would  have  taken  me  to 
the  bare  summit  of  Monte  Ceceri,  whence  he 
hoped  to  fly  to  Florence  in  a  mysterious  machine 
of  his  own  invention.  And  as  his  glance  and  his 
gesture  followed  the  flight  of  birds  through  my 
Florentine  sky,  I  would  have  repeated  to  him 
'Alexandrian  subtleties  learned  from  some  dis- 
ciple of  Ficino. 

But  the  times  have  changed  too  much.    Amid 


LEONARDO  DA  VINCI  17 

the  relentless  progress  of  our  day  it  would  be 
mad  to  regret  the  bloody  and  barbaric  age  of  the 
Renaissance.  In  the  streets  of  Florence,  clut- 
tered with  cabs  and  bicycles,  one  can  no  longer 
spin  a  quiet  syllogism,  one  can  no  longer  enjoy 
in  silence  the  red  glow  of  sunset  on  the  noble 
dark-browed  palaces.  The  Leonardo  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  with  his  fine  raiment  and  his  great 
dreams,  would  not  now  be  at  home  in  that  Milan 
to  which  he  gave  so  many  gentle  images.  And 
^lilan  would  be  too  busy  with  municipal  elec- 
tions and  the  exportation  of  rubber  to  take  any 
interest  in  him. 

If  Leonardo  is  to  live  on  as  something  more 
than  a  subject  for  theses  and  for  lantern  slides,  he 
must  be  transformed,  must  be  given  a  spiritual 
existence.  This  transformation  is  what  I  have 
sought  to  achieve. 


II 


In  the  real  Leonardo,  as  revealed  by  his  writ- 
ings and  by  other  records,  there  are  some  ele- 
ments that  I  do  not  find  sympathetic.  He  had 
too  much  of  a  mania  for  science.  His  disheveled 
books  are  too  full  of  observations  and  of  tiny 
facts.  It  seems  as  though  this  man,  whose  father 
and  grandfather  had  been  notaries,  were  pos- 
sessed by  an  atavistic  desire  to  undertake  an  in- 


18     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

ventory  of  the  universe.  That  passion  for  detail 
which  has  dulled  the  spirits  of  so  many  of  his 
successors  had  seized  him  all  too  firmly.  In  a 
certain  sense  (and  I  am  sincerely  sorry  to  speak 
so  ill  of  him)  he  was  a  positivist  long  before  the 
time  of  positivism.  For  that  reason,  perhaps,  he 
is  held  in  high  esteem  by  our  own  scientists. 
Every  now  and  then  one  of  these  gentlemen  dis- 
covers that  Leonardo  was  the  founder  of  some 
science  or  other,  and  salutes  him  as  father  and 
master  of  the  experimental  method. 

There  is  doubtless  a  certain  amount  of  exag- 
geration in  this  point  of  view.  I  am  even  in- 
clined to  believe  that  Leonardo  was  much  less  of 
a  positivist  than  the  moderns  would  have  us  think 
— some  of  his  cosmological  conceptions,  for  in- 
stance, are  hopelessly  marked  by  animism  and 
anthropocentrism.  Nevertheless,  one  can  but 
recognize  that  he  deserves  the  title  of  scientist, 
that  he  is  even  more  of  a  scientist  than  an  artist 
— and  for  that  I  cannot  forgive  him.  Even  his 
painting,  though  he  poured  into  it  the  treasure 
of  his  dreams,  was  to  him  primarily  a  form  of 
science,  destined  to  reproduce  the  aspects  of  na- 
ture with  the  most  scrupulous  fidehty.  All  his 
studies,  even  those  which  were  directly  related 
to  his  work  as  painter,  led  in  reality  toward  a  com- 
plete knowledge  of  the  universe.  And  this  con- 
stant preoccupation,  which  wins  the  plaudits  of 


LEONARDO  DA  VINCI  19 

the  scientists,  tends  on  the  contrary  to  repel  those 
who  love  sesthetic  and  metaphysical  unreality, 
as  I  do. 

Had  he  been  rather  a  philosopher  than  an 
artist  I  could  willingly  have  pardoned  him:  I 
could  indeed  have  praised  him  without  reserve. 
But  his  philosophy,  it  must  be  confessed,  does 
not  amount  to  much.  In  its  essence  it  consists 
of  the  old  Greek  idea  of  the  world  as  a  living 
organism;  and  his  acceptance  of  this  idea  is  in- 
consistent with  his  criticism  of  those  thinkers 
whose  theories  are  not  supported  by  experiment. 
Now  a  man  who  has  not  reached  that  aristocratic 
intellectuality  which  treats  ideas  as  of  supreme 
interest  in  themselves,  without  the  least  thought 
of  their  relation  to  facts,  has  not  attained  the 
greatest  heights. 

Perhaps,  too,  those  delicate  lovers  of  strange 
souls  who,  like  Walter  Pater,  have  admitted  the 
wondrous  Leonardo  into  their  intimate  circle  of 
great  spirits,  have  not  fully  realized  that  this 
man  was  too  much  inclined  to  practical  and 
mathematical  interests.  Much  of  his  research 
was  devoted  to  the  invention  of  machinery  and 
apparatus  for  canals  or  sluices,  or  to  the  construc- 
tion of  engines  which  could  kill  or  defend,  or  to 
the  designing  of  wonderful  vehicles.  He  is  for- 
ever saying  that  one  must  think  of  practical 
utihty;  and  much  as  he  loved  knowledge  in  itself, 


20     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

I  suspect  that  many  of  his  experiments  were  tried 
for  purely  practical  ends.  And  it  sometimes  sad- 
dens me  to  think  that  the  man  who  left  us  the 
"Adoration  of  the  Magi"  is  famous  also  for  the 
canals  of  Lombardy. 

Such  criticism  may  lead  the  reader  to  think 
that  I  am  incapable  of  appreciating  versatility. 
Had  I  the  time,  I  might  answer  that  the  problem 
is  really  one  of  quantity  and  quality.  It  is  not 
the  number  of  things  that  a  man  has  done  that 
matters,  but  their  excellence.  I  could  wish  that 
Leonardo  had  painted  one  more  canvas  and  left 
a  hundred  less  precepts ;  and  I  could  indeed  will- 
ingly dispense  with  that  praise  of  his  universality 
which  is  so  showered  upon  him  by  men  who  do 
not  realize  the  meaning  of  their  words.  Botanists 
and  engineers  of  our  own  day  can  draw  plants 
and  plans  of  fortresses;  but  for  the  painting  of 
certain  mountainous  backgrounds  and  for  the 
writing  of  certain  pensees  there  has  been  none 
save  Leonardo — and  it  is  sad  to  think  that  so 
much  of  his  time  was  spent  on  things  unworthy 
of  his  powers. 

So  too  I  regret  the  excessive  time  he  spent  in 
companionship  with  other  men,  and  the  hours 
that  he  wasted  in  the  courts  of  Milan  and  of 
France  at  repartee  with  ladies  and  with  princes. 
He  was  delightful  in  conversation — so  the  his- 
torians say — and  those  ambiguous  prophecies  of 


LEOIS^ARDO  DA  VINCI  21 

his,  which  at  times  seem  weighty  with  hidden 
meaning,  were  but  riddles  devised  to  sharpen 
courtly  wit.  I  cannot  imagine  my  Leonardo, 
author  of  the  most  profound  of  all  eulogies  of 
solitude,  as  the  entertainer  of  a  fashionable  com- 
pany. In  the  spiritual  biography  of  my  Leonardo 
I  have  canceled  the  hours  which  the  historic 
Leonardo  spent  in  society;  and  have  sent  him 
instead  over  mountain  slopes  and  summits, 
searching  for  wild  flowers  and  watching  the  flight 
of  royal  eagles. 


III 


But  it  is  high  time  that  I  should  turn  to  my 
own  Leonardo  and  his  secret. 

Unlike  the  Leonardo  of  history,  mine  did  not 
die  on  the  second  of  May,  1519,  in  the  mel- 
ancholy castle  of  Cloux.  He  is  still  living,  and 
very  much  alive ;  he  is  within  me ;  he  is  a  part  of 
myself,  a  precious  fragment  of  my  spirit. 

He  dwells  as  of  old  in  his  fair  Italy,  and  stirs 
me  to  pulsing  meditation  in  the  keen  Tuscan 
springtime.  He  repeats  to  me  some  of  his  pro- 
f oundest  sayings ;  he  helps  me  to  realize  the  full 
wonder  of  certain  sunsets.  In  the  Pantheon  of 
my  soul  he  is  one  of  the  most  inspiring  geniuses, 
one  of  the  most  adored  divinities.  His  image, 
beside  that  of  his  younger  brother,  Percy  Bysshe 


22     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Shelley,  and  opposite  that  of  the  Olympian 
Goethe,  illumines  the  current  of  my  thoughts 
and  charms  the  tapestry  of  my  unwearying 
dreams. 

Literal  folk  who  consider  great  men  as  ex- 
ternal and  independent  beings  will  reproach  me 
for  sacrilege,  and  express  surprise  at  this  adap- 
tation of  a  genius  to  the  spiritual  needs  of  one 
obscure  soul.  They  may  protest  as  loudly  as 
they  will:  they  have  failed  to  understand  that 
the  great  men  of  the  past  are  in  reality  instru- 
ments of  the  present,  themes  on  which  we  may 
build  personality,  fragments  of  olden  time 
through  which  we  may  learn  to  analyze  our- 
selves, dead  bodies  to  which  we  may  give 
new  life.  If  we  content  ourselves  with 
knowing  the  external  vicissitudes  of  the 
great,  the  scenes  in  which  they  moved,  the 
lists  of  their  works,  their  characteristic  traits 
of  style,  we  are  simply  gathering  erudition,  we 
are  approaching  the  temple  without  prayer,  we 
are  entering  the  orchard  without  tasting  its  fruit. 
But  if  we  seek  to  know  the  heroes  of  the  past 
truly  and  profoundly,  we  shall  make  them  mem- 
bers of  ourselves,  our  own  instruments  of  joy — 
we  shall  save  their  treasure  by  enabling  them  to 
live  again  in  us.  A  great  man  may  be  known 
either  through  dead  words  and  documents  or 
through   present   and   individual   consciousness. 


LEONARDO  DA  VINCI  23 

Only  the  poor  and  the  timid  choose  the  former 
way. 

Thus  with  historic  materials  I  have  created  a 
living  Leonardo,  who  satisfies  my  need  and  my 
desire  far  better  than  his  prototype. 

This  second  Leonardo  is  neither  a  pure  scien- 
tist nor  a  pure  artist — much  less  is  he  an  engineer 
or  a  courtier.  He  is  the  complete  type  of  the 
inner  man — unwilling  to  reveal  himself  too  rich 
in  spiritual  fruit,  lest  greedy  folk  should  ruin 
him.  He  loves  sohtary  toil,  and  feels  himself 
diminished  by  the  presence  of  others;  he  knows 
the  power  of  silence ;  he  gathers  for  his  own  sake, 
and  does  not  cast  the  treasure  of  his  thoughts 
amid  the  crowd.  In  that  first  hfe  that  was  his 
youth  he  meditated  more  than  all  his  fellows,  yet 
he  did  not  publish  a  single  book;  his  broad- 
winged  fancy  conceived  the  fairest  of  all  visions, 
the  sweetest  and  most  alluring  of  all  faces,  yet 
he  left  to  men  but  a  few  unfinished  sketches;  he 
was  a  profound  and  subtle  poet,  yet  in  the  heart 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  he  had  the  heroism 
not  to  write  a  single  line.  In  a  word,  he  is  one 
of  those  rare  men  who  are  sufficient  unto  them- 
selves, who  are  not  concerned  with  others;  into 
whose  souls,  as  close  and  strong  as  a  breastplate, 
only  a  few  companion  spirits  win  admission. 

He  is  a  pagan  ascetic,  a  purified  mystic,  who 
chose  to  ascend  the  heights  of  intellectual  ecstasy 


24     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

by  the  two  great  paths  of  art  and  knowledge. 
His  paintings  are  but  memories  of  visions  he 
sought  to  fix  in  color  that  he  might  rise  still 
higher.  His  observations  and  his  speculations 
are  but  doors  through  which  he  passed  to  behold 
the  secrets  of  nature,  to  discover  throughout  the 
world  the  pulsing  of  that  life  which  he  perceived, 
and  thus  to  satisfy  the  perpetual  desire  of  souls 
that  are  incomplete.  All  his  creations,  in  beauty 
and  in  thought,  are  mystic:  steps  in  the  course 
of  his  ascent  (for  he  did  not  choose  to  follow 
the  way  of  the  Pseudo-Dionysius  and  Hugh  of 
St.  Victor)  to  that  divine  state  in  which  all 
shadow  is  illumined,  from  which  all  littleness  is 
banished — that  supreme  state  which  only  a  few 
saints,  a  few  artists,  and  a  few  philosophers  have 
been  able,  through  utter  resolution,  to  attain. 

Like  all  great  men,  my  Leonardo  tends  to 
make  his  life  his  masterpiece.  His  works  are 
but  the  foot-prints  of  his  path,  stones  that  the 
master  cast  by  the  wayside  to  mark  his  progress, 
though  posterity  has  mistaken  them  for  the  ob- 
jects of  his  toil.  But  his  purpose  lay  beyond. 
And  if  in  his  first  life  his  mystic  conquest  was 
imperfect,  if  he  did  not  reach  that  summit  that 
o'ertops  all  other  heights,  he  is  nearer  his  goal 
in  this  his  second  life. 

In  this  epoch,  when  a  great  revolution  in 
thought  is  imminent,  he  represents  for  me  the 


LEONARDO  DA  VINCI  25 

achievement  of  personality,  the  possession  of  self, 
the  conquest  of  the  world  by  means  of  thought 
and  image.  Ibsen's  exhortation — "Be  yourself" 
— is  absurd.  Every  one  of  us  is  himself,  whether 
he  will  or  no;  and  when  one  imitates  another  it 
simply  means  that  the  instinct  of  imitation  is 
part  of  himself.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  gives  us 
something  better  than  an  exhortation:  the  glori- 
ous exami^le  of  a  life  fair,  rich,  and  intimate,  a  life 
which  seeks  ever  to  surpass  itself,  to  become 
deeper,  more  individual,  more  spiritual. 

In  the  name  of  this  lover  of  fair  forms,  who 
hid  that  which  he  loved  and  that  which  he  dis- 
covered, we  may  proclaim  a  new  age  of  the  spirit, 
an  age  for  which  a  little  band  of  his  younger 
brothers  is  seeking  to  prepare  the  way. 

Above  our  common  life,  outside  the  throng  of 
those  who  have  not  ears  to  hear,  beyond  the  little 
steaming  ring  wherein  men  seek  the  means  of 
sustenance,  let  us  speed  our  hearts  toward  the 
master  of  shadows  and  of  smiles. 


IV 

LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI  * 

This  present  age  of  literary  dilettanteism,  of 
elegant  scribbling,  has  chosen  to  represent  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  as  the  most 
glorious  epoch  of  the  Italian  people,  as  the  Ren- 
aissance of  all  grandeur  and  all  beauty.  We 
men  and  women  of  today  admire  civilization 
through  guide-books  and  picture-postcards ;  pow- 
erless to  create  new  monuments,  we  boast  that  we 
love  the  monuments  of  old;  incapable  of  heroic 
action,  we  sit  by  the  fire  and  read  of  the  heroes 
of  Homer  and  Villani.  We  prefer  the  polished 
elegance  of  church  or  palace  to  the  bristling 
stone  of  the  fortress — and  we  exalt  the  Quat- 
trocento. Our  own  literary  epoch  has  magnified 
a  former  literary  epoch;  and  the  legend  of  the 
"Dark  Ages"  still  endures. 

The  fifteenth  century  was  a  time  of  rebirth, 
but  it  was  a  time  of  death  as  well ;  and  we  have 
failed  to  ask  whether  the  renewal  of  certain  ele- 
ments of  life  brought  full  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  the  elements  that  disappeared.    The  very 

» Written  in  1904,  for  the  fifth  centenary  of  Alberti's  birth. 
26 


LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI       27 

gentleness  of  our  sedentary  culture  has  led  us 
to  love  and  admire  the  extraordinary  century 
that  witnessed  our  undoing  and  initiated  our 
deepest  decadence.  The  Quattrocento  marks 
the  transition  from  the  active,  original,  rough, 
strong  civilization  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the  ver- 
bal, imitative,  insincere,  pacific  civilization  of  the 
succeeding  centuries.  In  the  Quattrocento  the 
man  of  action  yields  to  the  man  of  words;  the 
book  takes  the  place  of  the  sword;  the  fortress 
becomes  a  villa  garden;  skeptical  dilettanteism 
casts  out  faith.  Great  words  win  honor  such  as 
hitherto  had  been  accorded  to  great  deeds  alone. 
Achievement  ended,  men  tell  of  past  achieve- 
ment. Art  and  literature,  which  had  served  for 
the  expression  of  spiritual  energy,  become  clever 
means  of  acquiring  fame  and  power. 

The  man  who  knew  little  of  letters  but  was 
strong  in  body  and  austere  in  spirit,  the  con- 
queror of  kingdoms,  the  governor  of  cities,  gives 
way  to  the  insinuating  humanist ;  and  the  human- 
ist, grown  lean  in  the  study  of  Cicero,  admiring 
strenuous  deeds  in  safe  seclusion,  becomes  the  his- 
torian of  the  past  and  the  prophet  of  the  future, 
but  has  neither  the  wit  nor  the  power  to  act  in 
the  present.  To  a  civilization  of  muscles,  stone, 
and  iron,  there  svicceeds  a  civilization  of  nerves, 
pens,  and  papers.  There  are  poets  a-plenty  for 
the  writing  of  paeans,  but  there  are  no  heroes  for 


28     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

them  to  celebrate.  As  a  philosopher  might  put 
it,  the  dominion  of  the  external  gives  place  to  the 
dominion  of  the  internal. 

The  period  we  are  wont  to  call  the  Renais- 
sance appears,  then,  to  be  in  certain  respects  a 
period  of  weakening  and  decline.  And  if  Italy- 
would  return  to  a  life  more  intense  and  more 
energetic  than  that  which  now  she  leads  amid 
verbal  pyrotechnics  and  the  academic  discourses 
of  Parliament,  she  must  resolutely  expel  the  dan- 
gerous maladies  which  the  Renaissance  intro- 
duced into  her  blood,  must  return  to  deeper  and 
more  bitter  springs,  must  forget  the  lust  of  orna- 
ment and  the  delights  of  rhetoric,  must  set  her- 
self to  action  rather  than  to  speech,  to  new 
achievement  rather  than  to  admiration. 

Such  thoughts  as  these  might  well  be  suggested 
by  the  centenary  of  Leon  Battista  Alberti  if  such 
occasions,  instead  of  serving  merely  for  the  dis- 
play of  erudition  and  municipal  vanity,  really  led 
us  to  seek  the  essential  message  and  the  continu- 
ing inspiration  of  the  great  men  they  celebrate. 

For  Alberti  signifies  the  passage  from  the  he- 
roic, active  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the  grace- 
ful, wordy  epoch  that  ensued,  and  illustrates, 
even  more  clearly  than  Petrarch  or  Leonardo, 
that  softening  of  the  conceptions  of  life  which 
was  to  lead  at  last  to  the  spiritual  degeneration 
of  the  seventeenth  century.    He  is  indeed,  to  bor- 


LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI       29 

row  Emerson's  term,  the  "representative  man" 
of  the  Quattrocentro,  of  an  age  sad  and  wondrous 
in  its  ambiguity  and  its  versatility.  His  life  is 
truly  a  mirror  of  the  time. 

Consider  his  ancestry.  He  came  of  that  glorious 
Alberti  family  which  has  given  Florence  so  many 
successful  merchants,  energetic  statesmen,  and 
turbulent  partisans.  Shortly  before  the  time  of 
his  birth  the  family  had  been  banished,  and  Leon 
Battista  was  born  in  exile  in  Genoa,  where  his 
kinsmen  continued  their  mercantile  pursuits  and 
plotted  a  return  to  Florence.  He  might  have 
become  a  merchant-politician  like  his  ancestors, 
might  have  won  riches  and  governed  men.  He 
preferred,  on  the  contraiy,  to  devote  himself  to 
letters.  Study  attracted  him.  He  wished  to  know 
Greek  and  Latin,  to  read  Plato  and  Virgil;  he 
had  no  desire  to  export  cloths  to  the  East,  or  to 
measure  his  strength  with  the  leader  of  a  hostile 
faction. 

In  his  childhood  his  father  sought  to  train  his 
body,  to  make  him  strong  and  handsome;  and 
they  tell  us,  indeed,  that  he  could  tame  wild 
horses,  and  that  he  used  to  climb  pathless  moun- 
tains. But  the  lure  of  letters  called  him  to 
Bologna  and  the  law;  and  he  turned  to  study  with 
such  ardor  that  he  lost  his  health  and  became  a 
lean  and  trembling  scholar,  suffering  from  nerv- 
ous ills  and  absentmindedness. 


30     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Even  so  the  whole  race  was  losing  its  vigor 
amid  studies  and  pleasures,  and  the  time  of  its 
ignoble  paralysis  was  near  at  hand. 

But  study  consoled  Alberti  for  all  that  he  had 
lost ;  letters  and  philosophy  led  him  to  scorn  all 
else.  Perilous  indeed  is  contact  with  the  ancients ! 
The  men  of  the  Quattrocento,  like  barbarians 
come  to  a  marvelous  city,  were  overwhelmed  with 
reverence  for  the  divine  Latin  works.  They  had 
no  hope  of  reaching  higher  excellence;  they 
sought  a  similar  perfection;  they  could  but  imi- 
tate. Their  greatest  desire  was  that  scholars 
should  think  their  writings  a  recovered  treasure. 
So  when  Alberti,  in  spare  hours  at  Bologna, 
wrote  a  comedy,  the  Fhilodooceos,  in  which  he  al- 
legorized his  love  of  learning,  he  himself  spread 
the  rumor  that  it  was  a  new-found  piece  .by  an 
ancient  writer  of  comedies  named  Lepidus — and 
had  the  satisfaction  of  deceiving  his  literary 
friends. 

There  no  longer  existed  that  indifference  to 
glory  which  had  marked  the  obscure  artisans  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  the  nameless  builders  and 
sculptors  of  the  great  cathedrals;  nor  had  there 
yet  appeared  the  complacent  modern  genius, 
who,  sure  of  himself  and  of  the  novelty  of  his 
work,  sends  it  forth  under  his  own  name.  The 
men  of  the  Quattrocento  sought  shelter  under 


LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI      31 

classic  robes:  they  strove  not  to  do  more  than 
the  ancients,  but  to  do  as  the  ancients  had  done. 

This  attitude  of  intellectual  servility  is  to  be 
found  throughout  the  work  of  Alberti.  In  his 
moral  treatises  he  mingles  Stoic  ethics  with  the 
traditions  of  Christian  goodness  and  of  Floren- 
tine frugality.  In  his  books  on  art  he  supports 
his  precepts  by  the  authority  of  ancient  writings 
and  by  the  example  of  ancient  works.  In  his 
architectural  designs  Roman  triumphal  arches 
become  doorways,  and  he  is  classic  at  any  cost. 

Even  when,  as  in  the  Rucellai  palace,  he  did 
not  entirely  abandon  local  tradition,  he  intro- 
duced into  the  mediaeval  forms  a  grace  derived 
from  classic  models  and  from  the  teachings  of 
Vitruvius.  So  in  Rimini  he  did  his  best  to  bury 
the  little  Franciscan  church  under  the  splendor 
of  his  Hellenizing  imagination;  and  in  the  Tem- 
ple of  the  Divine  Isotta  he  expressed  the  very 
spirit  of  the  learned  tyrant,  Sigismondo  Mala- 
testa,  who  had  achieved  a  complete  denial  of  the 
Christian  motives  of  the  preceding  age. 

He  refined — that  is,  he  weakened.  His  struc- 
tures are  more  graceful  and  less  solid,  more  regu- 
lar and  less  original.  Out  of  the  stern  old  Flor- 
entine palace  with  its  rough-hewn  blocks  project- 
ing as  though  in  challenge  he  made  the  elegant 
Palazzo  Rucellai,  whose  joyously  rising  pilasters 
and  smooth  ordered  stones  are  an  eesthetic  de- 


32     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

light — utterly  without  menace.  For  mediaeval 
ferocity  he  substitutes  pagan  pleasantness. 

I  regard  Alberti  as  one  of  the  most  com- 
pletely Hellenic  of  all  Italians.  He  had  the 
Attic  sense  of  measure,  of  order,  of  regularity. 
His  love  of  geometry  {vide  Milhaud's  theory  of 
the  geometrical  foundation  of  Greek  culture) ,  his 
search  for  the  perfect  type  of  human  beauty,  his 
care  in  measurement,  and  his  passion  for  the 
architectonic,  the  symmetrical,  the  non-fantastic, 
bring  him  close  to  the  intellectual  type  of  the 
Greeks. 

And  he  resembled  them,  as  well,  in  the  varied 
curiosity  that  made  him  turn  from  law  to  letters, 
from  painting  to  architecture  or  sculpture,  from 
physics  to  mathematics,  from  religion  and  ethics 
to  grammar.  He  was  the  first  of  those  universal 
men  of  the  Renaissance  whose  line  was  to  culmi- 
nate in  Leonardo :  men  who  stopped  work  on  an 
equestrian  statue  to  write  an  apologue,  or  turned 
to  the  invention  of  military  engines  after  the 
building  of  a  church  or  the  conclusion  of  a  series 
of  scientific  experiments. 

In  this  respect  also  Alberti  expresses  that  lib- 
erating tendency  which  developed  after  the  firmly 
organic  society  of  the  INIiddle  Ages  had  broken 
up,  and  men  no  longer  felt  themselves  bound  to 
city,  art,  and  guild,  but  rather,  like  greyhounds 
freed  of  the  leash,  sped  hither  and  yon  in  search 


LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI      38 

of  any  prey.  The  limited  man,  the  man  of  a  sin- 
gle interest,  had  disappeared;  in  his  stead  came 
the  complete,  the  universal  man.  Dilettanteism 
had  begun:  that  man  was  called  "virtuous"  who 
knew  something  of  everything,  to  whom  nothing 
was  new. 

While  versatility  was  represented  by  men  of 
the  prodigious  energy  of  Alberti  and  Leonardo, 
it  was  by  no  means  vain,  but  when  small  spirits 
attempted  all  things,  spoiled  all  things,  and  be- 
littled all  things,  then  versatility  led  to  decadence. 

Even  Alberti's  versatihty  was  more  apparent 
than  real,  was  a  matter  rather  of  letters  than  of 
practice.  He  wrote  on  many  topics,  but  he  did 
not  actually  do  many  different  things.  He  for- 
mulated precepts  for  painting  and  for  sculpture, 
but  he  left  neither  paintings  nor  statues.  He 
designed  many  buildings,  but  he  brought  only 
a  few  to  completion.  His  writings  are  numerous : 
his  only  practical  activities  are  his  journeys  and 
his  service  as  secretary  of  the  Papal  chancery. 

His  universality,  then,  was  more  verbal  than 
concrete.  He  produced  instructions  rather  than 
works;  he  was  more  disposed  to  say  what  should 
be  done  than  to  act  himself.  And  he  thus  re- 
veals the  aristocratic  instinct  transmitted  to  him 
by  the  rich  and  powerful  family  from  which  he 
sprang.  In  the  field  of  art  his  attitude  is  that  of 
the  condescending  nobleman,  not  that  of  the  busy 


34     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

rising  artisan.  He  gives  orders  to  be  carried 
out  by  his  inferiors,  and  does  not  deign  to  work 
with  his  own  hands. 

He  feels  the  superiority  of  the  creative  intellect, 
of  the  imaginative  spirit.  He  would  be  the  mind 
that  originates,  the  will  that  commands,  not  the 
base  instrument  of  material  execution.  He 
brought  into  art  his  inherited  nobility;  and  the 
Renaissance  received  from  him  that  spiritual 
aristocracy  that  made  it  so  marvelous  and  so 
ephemeral. 

Before  the  century  grew  dark  and  the  first 
barbarians  came  over  the  Alps  to  plunder  Italy, 
helpless  in  her  refinement,  Alberti  died  serenely 
at  Rome,  in  1472.  He  had  written  that  man  is 
"like  a  ship  destined  not  to  rot  in  the  harbor, 
but  to  plow  new  paths  over  the  sea,  and  to  tend 
ever  through  self-exercise  toward  praise  and  the 
fruit  of  glory."  And  in  this  sense  he  had  been 
indeed  a  voyager. 

Perhaps  the  very  extent  of  his  verbal  versa- 
tility kept  him  from  greater  actual  achievement. 
In  the  presence  of  his  multiform  and  restless 
spirit,  one  thinks  of  his  experience  with  the  ship 
of  the  Lake  of  Nemi.  Tradition  had  it  that  an 
ancient  trireme  lay  sunken  in  this  lake.  Cardinal 
Colonna  commissioned  Alberti  to  try  to  raise 
it,  and  he,  by  clever  mechanisms,  succeeded  in 
sending  divers  down  and  in  bringing  up  the  prow 


LEON  BATTISTA  ALBERTI       35 

and  part  of  the  hull.  But  lack  of  money  or  of 
efficient  machinery  prevented  the  completion  of 
the  task,  and  the  fair  ship  remained  for  centuries 
beneath  the  waters. 

Just  so  Alberti  has  made  known  some  portions 
of  his  soul,  and  it  is  for  us  to  plumb  the  depths 
to  discover  all  that  he  did  not  reveal.  Instead  of 
gathering  laboriously  the  data  of  his  external  life, 
we  may  well  reconstruct  in  ourselves  his  inner 
experience.  So  only  can  the  dead  be  our  mas- 
ters ;  so  only  can  the  great  lead  us  to  still  greater 
heights. 


V 

BERKELEY 


Berkeley  was  one  of  those  men  who  cannot 
or  will  not  decide  whether  to  devote  themselves 
to  thought  or  to  action.  They  are  enamored  of 
ideas,  but  they  would  have  ideas  triumph  at  once 
in  the  reality  of  daily  life.  They  would  influence 
men,  they  would  transform  the  world,  but  they 
rely  on  thought  and  word  as  instruments.  They 
know  the  pleasure  of  intellectual  activity  and  the 
joy  of  discovery,  but  they  soon  weary  of  solitary 
meditation.  They  seek  to  do  good,  and  to  min- 
gle in  the  affairs  of  the  social  group  to  which  they 
belong,  but  they  cannot  make  up  their  minds  to 
sacrifice  truth  to  possibility,  the  things  of  the 
spirit  to  the  necessities  of  common  life.  And 
even  if  they  succeed  in  winning  men  by  their  en- 
thusiasm, they  fall  victims  at  the  last  to  their  own 
intellectual  ingenuousness.  Thus  their  specula- 
tions are  disturbed  by  their  practical  purposes, 
they  are  fatally  hampered  by  considerations  of 
moral  propriety  or  by  dogma;  and  on  the  other 


BERKELEY  37 

hand,  their  action  is  thwarted  and  delayed  by 
their  ideological  prejudices  and  by  that  element 
of  the  paradoxical  which  is  to  be  found  in  every 
thinker  who  is  not  content  merely  to  repeat  the 
ideas  of  his  predecessors. 

Thus  they  waver  between  the  search  for  gen- 
eral concepts  and  the  management  of  particular 
undertakings,  between  the  tower  of  the  philoso- 
pher and  the  pulpit  of  the  preacher.  They  are  too 
theoretical  to  start  a  true  religious  or  social  revo- 
lution, too  oratorical  to  be  taken  seriously  by 
professional  scientists  and  metaphysicians.  The 
learned  look  down  on  them  a  little,  and  the  people 
pity  them.  They  love  many  things,  they  often 
change  occupation,  they  sometimes  change  opin- 
ion. Not  that  they  are  dilettantes — far  from  it! 
They  are  very  much  in  earnest  about  their  own 
activities,  but  they  are  men  of  such  multiform 
vivacity  that  they  cannot  stay  for  forty  or  fifty 
years  in  a  single  rut.  Among  them  you  will  find 
the  discoverers  of  the  intuitions  which  are  ul- 
timately developed  by  those  mastodontic  pedants 
who  cannot  assimilate  ideas  less  than  fifty  years 
old.  Among  them  you  will  find  the  agitators, 
the  revolutionists,  the  aristocratic  propagandists 
who  form  an  intermediate  class  between  the  dis- 
dainful metaphysicians — outspoken  enemies  of 
clearness  and  of  utility — and  the  great  simple 
apostles  of  the  people,  men  of  intuition  who  stir 


38     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

the  city  as  though  by  magic,   and  draw  their 
words  not  from  books  but  from  the  heart. 

This  class  of  men  has  not  yet  been  thoroughly 
described  nor  patiently  studied,  but  it  is  larger 
than  one  would  think.  The  pure,  absolute  types 
of  the  philosopher,  the  artist,  the  practical  man, 
are  very  rare.  A  careful  scrutiny  will  discover 
Utopians  among  business  men,  empiricists  among 
philosophers,  money-makers  among  poets. 

All  this  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Berkeley. 
In  him,  indeed,  if  you  scratch  the  philosopher, 
you  will  find  the  Christian  apostle ;  if  you  scratch 
the  man  of  rehgion,  you  will  find  the  civic  moral- 
ist ;  if  you  scratch  the  preacher,  you  will  find  the 
practical  man  and  the  artist ;  and  after  all  these 
scratchings,  you  will  not  know  which  of  all  these 
persons  is  the  true,  the  fundamental,  the  irre- 
ducible Berkeley. 

The  first  period  of  his  hfe  (1685-1713)  is  de- 
voted wholly  to  knowledge,  and  in  particular, 
to  philosophy.  This  is  the  period  when  he  wins 
high  honors  at  Trinity,  when  he  studies  mathe- 
matics and  pubhshes  his  Arithmetic,  when  he  and 
his  friends,  in  a  sort  of  philosophic  academy  which 
he  had  founded,  discuss  natural  philosophy, 
Descartes,  Locke,  Spinoza,  and  Newton.  But  it  is 
preeminently  the  period  when  enter  triumphant 
exclamations  and  mysterious  hints  in  his  Com- 
monplace  Book — hasty    notes    concerning   that 


BERKELEY  39 

"new  principle,"  that  "great  discovery,"  that  the- 
ory of  the  non-existence  of  matter,  which  was  to 
be  one  of  the  three  important  fixed  ideas  of  his  life 
(the  other  two,  as  we  shall  see,  were  his  scheme 
for  the  evangelization  of  the  American  Indians 
and  his  belief  in  the  virtues  of  tar-water).  The 
Essay  towards  a  New  Theory  of  Vmon  (1709), 
in  which  the  new  principle  is  applied  somewhat 
timidly  to  the  sensations  of  sight,  belongs  to  these 
years.  Soon  after  this  came  the  Treatise  con- 
cerning the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge 
( 1710) ,  in  which  the  inconceivability  of  a  material 
substance  is  demonstrated  and  defended  at  great 
length,  and  the  Three  Dialogues  between  Hylas 
and  Philonous  (1713) ,  which  are  the  polite  mani- 
festo of  immaterialism.  The  great  principle, 
presented  as  the  best  philosophic  preventive 
against  the  plagues  of  skepticism  and  immorality, 
is  thus  brought  within  the  range  of  parlor  vision. 
In  1713,  with  Berkeley's  journey  to  London, 
begins  the  period  of  his  mundane  and  wandering 
life.  The  young  Irishman  makes  acquaintances, 
becomes  the  friend  of  Swift,  who  presents  him 
at  court,  continues  in  Steele's  Guardian  his  cam- 
paign against  free-thinkers,  and  all  at  once  sets 
out  for  Sicily  in  the  suite  of  Lord  Peterborough. 
In  1714  he  was  again  in  London,  but  he  soon  left 
to  accompany  the  son  of  Bishop  Ashe  to 
France  and  Italy.     This  second  journey  lasted 


40     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

for  five  years.  Berkeley  stopped  for  a  while  in 
Paris,  where  he  seems  to  have  made  the  acquain- 
tance of  Malebranche;  then,  crossing  the  Alps 
on  the  first  of  January,  1715,  he  entered  Italy. 
He  traversed  the  entii'e  peninsula,  making  his 
longest  stops  at  Florence,  Rome,  and  Naples. 
His  journal  indicates  that  he  was  much  inter- 
ested in  archaeology  and  in  modern  painting,  and 
that  he  played  to  perfection  his  part  as  traveling 
tutor,  visiting  palaces,  churches,  private  collec- 
tions, and  the  ruins  of  ancient  monuments.  He 
did  also  something  which  very  few  visitors  have 
done  before  or  since :  he  traveled  through  a  great 
l^art  of  southern  Italy,  stopping  in  many  places 
— often  in  monasteries — and  interesting  himself 
in  agriculture,  in  the  political  organization  of 
the  country,  and  most  of  all  in  the  famous  ques- 
tion of  the  dance  of  the  tarantula.  In  1720  he 
started  back  toward  London,  but  stopped  at 
Lyons  to  write  a  Latin  essay,  De  motu,  to  be  pre- 
sented in  a  competition  held  by  the  Parisian 
Academy  of  Science. 

His  return  to  England  marks  the  beginning 
of  a  new  period  in  his  life :  the  period  of  his  apos- 
tleship.  He  found  his  country  convulsed  by  the 
catastrophe  of  the  South  Sea  Bubble,  and  he  pub- 
lished almost  at  once  a  little  work  in  which  he 
sought  to  remind  his  fellow  citizens  that  nothing 


BERKELEY  41 

but  moral  renovation  could  save  England  from 
greater  disasters. 

Like  an  earlier  Rousseau,  however,  he  believed 
that  the  corruption  of  Europe  was  hopelessly  ad- 
vanced, that  the  disease  had  gone  too  far  to  be 
eradicated  by  preachments  or  pamphlets.  It 
would  be  better,  he  thought,  to  turn  to  America, 
where  the  English  had  already  founded  colonies 
and  cities;  where  one  might  perhaps  inaugurate 
a  new  civilization,  purer  and  more  Christian  than 
that  of  the  Old  World.  With  a  httle  good  will, 
and  plenty  of  money,  one  might  convert  and  edu- 
cate the  aborigines,  who  might  then  be  employed 
in  the  furtherance  of  the  cause.  Thus  there 
sprang  up  in  Berkeley's  head  the  evangelistic, 
Rousseauistic,  and  somewhat  Utopian  idea  of 
founding  in  Bermuda  a  sort  of  university  to  train 
young  Indian  pastors.  Berkeley's  enthusiasm 
and  tranquil  assurance  were  contagious.  Many 
noblemen  promised  money.  A  number  of  peo- 
ple prepared  to  go  with  him.  Public  opinion 
was  favorable.  Parliament  approved  the  project. 
The  king  granted  a  charter  to  the  future  uni- 
versity; and  the  prime  minister,  Horace  Wal- 
pole,  though  at  first  opposed  to  the  plan,  was 
compelled  by  the  pressure  of  the  Court,  of  Par- 
liament, of  public  opinion,  and  of  the  friends  of 
Berkeley,  to  promise  a  subsidy  of  twenty  thou- 
sand pounds.    Without  waiting  for  the  delivery 


42     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

of  this  money,  he  began  preparations  for  his  de- 
parture. It  was  at  this  time  that  he  married 
Anne  Forster,  a  lady  of  mystic  leanings,  a  reader 
of  Fenelon  and  of  Mme  Guyon.  Early  in  Sep- 
tember, 1728,  he  left  Greenwich,  with  his  wife 
and  a  few  companions  (among  them  the  painter 
Smibert),  and  in  January,  1729,  he  reached 
America.  He  landed,  however,  not  in  Bermuda, 
but  at  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  where  for  two 
years  he  waited  for  the  money  which  never  came, 
read  many  ancient  philosophers,  fell  in  love  with 
Plato,  converted  some  of  the  American  clergy 
to  the  doctrine  of  immateriahsm,  founded  a  philo- 
sophic society,  and  wrote  his  most  extensive  work, 
Alciphron,  or  The  Minute  Philosopher. 

Late  in  1731,  following  the  advice  of  his 
friends,  he  returned  to  England,  where  he  pub- 
lished the  Alciphron  and  a  defense  of  his  Theory, 
of  Vision.  For  some  time  he  was  engaged  in 
polemics  with  free-thinkers  and  mathematicians, 
and  brought  out  new  editions  of  his  early  philo- 
sophical works,  modifying  his  thought  in  some 
respects. 

Berkeley's  stay  in  Rhode  Island  divides  his 
philosophic  activity  into  two  parts.  In  his  youth 
he  was  a  positivist  and  phenomenalist,  wary  of 
metaphysics.  In  his  maturity,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Platonism,  he  held  psychology  in  less 
esteem,  made  more  use  of  dialectics  than  of  the 


BERKELEY  43 

appeal  to  experience,  and  gave  to  his  constant 
thesis — that  the  world  is  immaterial — a  meta- 
physical rather  than  an  empiric  character. 

In  1734  the  episcopal  period  of  Berkeley's  life 
begins.  From  then  on,  his  name  was  always 
accompanied  by  the  title  "Bishop  of  Cloyne." 
During  this  period  he  was  much  occupied  by  the 
affairs  of  his  diocese,  in  which  the  Cathohcs  were 
numerous,  became  greatly  interested  in  the  Irish 
question,  and  continued  his  insistent  struggle 
against  unbelief.  In  1740  Ireland  was  devas- 
tated by  famine  and  disease,  and  Berkeley  re- 
membered a  remedy  of  which  he  had  learned  in 
America:  tar-water.  It  was  tried  with  success 
in  several  cases.  Be;rkeley  then  lost  his  head  and 
thought  he  had  discovered  a  universal  panacea. 
His  friend  Dr.  Prior  advertised  the  new  medicine 
extensively.  It  soon  became  fashionable,  and 
Berkeley,  with  increasing  enthusiasm,  wrote  one 
of  the  strangest  of  all  books,  the  Siris,  which 
starts  off  as  a  treatise  on  pharmacopoeia,  turns 
successively  into  a  medical  discussion  and  an  es- 
say in  physics,  and  is  finally  transformed  into  a 
transcendental  synthesis  of  neo-Platonic  thought 
and  Christian  revelation.  Berkeley's  tar-water 
brought  him  a  popularity  that  his  immaterialism 
had  failed  to  win;  and  his  philosophical  theories 
now  made  their  way  everywhere  in  England  and 
abroad,  in  the  suite  of  his  directions  for  the  use 


44     FOUR.  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

of  the  fashionable  specific.  But  he  by  no  means 
forgot  his  duties  as  bishop  and  as  citizen.  In  the 
last  years  of  his  life  he  wrote  several  pamphlets 
directed  against  the  Catholics,  and  those  Mcuriins 
concerning  Patriotism  which  are,  as  it  were,  his 
civic  testament. 

In  1751  his  health  broke,  misfortunes  came, 
and  he  decided  to  go  to  Oxford  with  his  son 
George.  He  left  Cloyne  in  1752 ;  but  he  was  not 
destined  long  to  enjoy  the  learned  life  of  the  uni- 
versity city,  for  he  died  of  paralysis  on  the  twen- 
tieth of  January,  1753,  amid  the  sincere  regret  of 
all  who  had  known  him. 

He  was  one  of  the  most  lovable  of  men.  His 
moral  qualities  were  highly  esteemed  during  his 
hfe,  while  the  full  value  of  his  teachings  was  not 
recognized  until  much  later.  For  eighteenth- 
century  England  he  stood  as  the  model  of  the 
active  and  cultivated  churchman  and  the  unselfish 
citizen,  so  full  of  initiative  and  of  enthusiasm 
for  religion  and  for  the  common  weal  that  he 
might  readily  be  pardoned  for  his  curious  philo- 
sophical ideas. 


II 


Those  who  regard  Berkeley  merely  as  a  phi- 
losopher are  but  slightly  acquainted  with  him. 
Berkeley  was  a  philosopher  also,  just  as  he  was 


BERKELEY  45 

also  a  botanist,^  also  a  mathematician,  also  a  poet. 
Those  who  know  him  best  are  well  aware  that 
the  central  purpose  of  his  life  was  neither  the 
tranquil  contemplation  of  concepts  nor  the  dis- 
passionate search  for  truth.  Unless  this  point  be 
first  established,  we  cannot  rightly  understand 
even  his  philosophy. 

What  though  continental  opinion  allows 
Berkeley  no  legal  domicile  save  in  those  heavy  his- 
tories of  philosophy  wherein  a  long  tradition  as- 
signs him  a  comfortable  place  between  the  arm- 
chair of  Locke  and  the  footstool  of  Hume  ?  What 
though  little  remains  of  Berkeley  in  the  memory 
of  the  average  student  save  his  reputation  as  im- 
materialist  and  the  famous  equation  es.ie  est 
percipi?  This  is  by  no  means  proof  that  Berkeley 
was  merely  an  inspector  and  tester  of  the  terms 
most  often  used  in  the  discussion  of  the  theory 
of  knowledge,  or  that  his  greatest  interest  was 
the  endeavor  to  achieve  a  profounder  definition 
of  the  word  "exist,"  and  thus  to  free  men's 
thought  of  the  old  belief  in  an  external,  inde- 
pendent, and  material  substance. 

If  you  compare  his  life  with  the  lives  of  the 
typical  philosophers — the  inevitable  Spinoza  or 
the  inevitable   Kant — a  striking  difference  ap- 

*  When  he  was  in  Sicily  he  collected  materials  for  a  natural 
history  of  the  island,  but  on  the  return  voyage  he  lost  the  manu- 
script, at  the  same  time,  perhaps,  when  he  lost  the  continuation 
of  his  Principles. 


46     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

pears.  Their  lives  hold  nothing  beyond  their 
philosophy  save  the  common  life  of  every-day,  the 
provision  of  food — by  the  polishing  of  lenses,  or 
the  teaching  of  physical  geography — and  its  con- 
smnption.  In  Berkeley,  on  the  contrary,  philo- 
sophic activity  was  but  a  part,  and  not  always 
the  dominant  part,  of  a  broader  spiritual  activity. 
For  he  was  priest  as  well  as  philosopher:  he  was 
a  true  and  ardent  apostle  of  Christianity,  a  re- 
sourceful champion  of  morality  and  of  Christian 
dogma.  From  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowl- 
edge (1710)  to  the  Maxims  coficerning  Patriot- 
ism (1750)  he  labored  with  all  his  might,  for 
forty  years,  to  establish  belief  and  to  increase 
righteousness  in  England. 

Those  who  know  all  the  works  of  Berkeley 
know  that  he  regarded  the  defense  of  religion 
as  the  most  important  of  all  things,  and  that  his 
life  was  a  constant  battle  against  skeptics,  athe- 
ists, nihilarians,  lihertins,  esprits  forts,  "men  of 
fashion,"  "minute  philosophers,"  against  all  who 
in  any  way,  by  argument  or  mockery,  by  treatise 
or  by  apologue,  offended  and  menaced  belief  in 
God,  belief  in  the  spirituality  of  the  world,  or 
Christian  morals.  The  Principles  of  Human 
Knowledge  were  written — as  the  young  philoso- 
pher proclaimed  upon  the  title-page — to  remove 
"the  bases  of  atheism  and  of  irreligion."  The 
pamphlet  on  Passive  Obedience  (1712)  is  merely 


BERKELEY  47 

a  development  of  the  evangelical  principle  of  non- 
resistance  to  the  Supreme  Power.  The  Three 
Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Pliilonous  (1713) 
seek  to  demonstrate  the  providence  of  God  and 
the  incorporeal  nature  of  the  soul,  to  the  confu- 
sion of  skeptics  and  atheists.  The  essays  of  the 
Guardian  (1713)  are  nearly  all  directed  against 
free-thinkers.  The  Essay  towards  Preventing 
the  Ruin  of  Great  Britain  (1721)  was  written 
to  remind  Englishmen,  then  distressed  by  finan- 
cial disaster,  that  a  society  cannot  be  safe  or  sane 
unless  it  is  sober,  pure,  and  religious.  The  Pro- 
posal for  the  Better  Supplying  of  the  Churches 
in  our  Foreign  Plantations  (1725)  is  the  public 
statement  of  Berkeley's  famous  project  for  the 
founding  of  a  university  in  Bermuda,  and  the 
conversion  of  the  American  Indians  to  Christian- 
ity. The  seven  dialogues  of  the  Alciphron 
constitute  a  complete  system  of  Christian  apolo- 
getics, philosophic  and  moral  in  method  and  em- 
phasis. The  Analyst  (1734)  is  a  critique  of  the 
differential  calculus — which  had  recently  been 
invented  and  was  attracting  much  attention — de- 
signed to  show  that  there  are  mysteries  in  mathe- 
matics as  well  as  in  faith,  and  that  one  of  the  most 
famous  anti-Christian  arguments  of  the  rational- 
ists has  therefore  no  validity.  The  Discourse 
Addressed  to  3Iagistrates  (1738)  is  from  begin- 
ning to  end  an  invective  against  the  license  and 


48     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

irreligion  of  the  times.  The  Siris  ( 1744 ) ,  though 
devoted  in  particular  to  the  praise  of  tar-water, 
ends  with  a  metaphysical  and  religious  portion  in 
which  the  writer  resumes  one  of  the  favorite 
theses  of  the  Renaissance:  the  marvelous  agree- 
ment between  the  philosophy  of  Plato  and  the 
Christian  revelation.  The  list  might  easily  be 
continued,  but  as  it  stands  it  includes  all  the  im- 
portant works  of  Berkeley;  and  in  every  one  of 
them  the  attack  on  irreligion,  even  if  it  does  not 
afford  the  subject  matter,  is  the  moving  principle 
of  the  work. 

Berkeley  was  not  content  to  watch  life  from  a 
window,  or  to  withdraw  into  the  world  of  thought 
in  the  pure  search  for  truth.  He  was  a  practical 
man  who  used  theoretical  means.  As  a  priest  he 
believed  in  Christianity;  and  as  a  practical  man 
he  saw  that  morality  was  based  upon  Christian- 
ity, and  that  a  morality  based  upon  religion  is 
necessary  for  any  society  that  is  to  escape  an  evil 
end.  He  therefore  considered  as  his  personal 
enemies  all  those  who  attacked  the  faith  and  the 
morals  of  the  people  and  the  prosperity  of  the 
nation.  Atheists,  to  his  mind,  were  not  merely 
superficial  thinkers  and  cheap  philosophers,  but 
also,  and  primarily,  enemies  to  humanity  and  trai- 
tors to  their  fatherland.  As  a  shepherd  of  souls 
and  as  a  citizen  he  felt  that  his  first  duty  was  to 
harass,  to  pursue,  and  to  attack  such  enemies. 


BERKELEY  49 

He  did  his  best  to  fulfil  that  duty.  And  since 
philosoi^hy  is  one  of  the  weapons  unbelievers  use, 
he  sought  to  blow  the  ground  from  under  their 
feet  by  a  philosophic  mine:  the  theory  of  imma- 
terialism.  His  development  of  this  theory,  which 
in  the  eyes  of  most  historians  constitutes  the 
whole  of  Berkeley,  is  in  reality  merely  one  phase 
of  his  Glaubenkamijf . 


Ill 


A  thorough  examination  of  Berkeley's  leading 
characteristics  would  compel  us,  in  any  case,  to 
conclude  that  he  could  never  have  been  a  pure 
philosopher,  even  had  he  so  desired.  Indeed,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  dogmatic  assumptions  and  the 
moral  purposes  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
he  was  dominated  by  considerations  which  are 
usually  regarded  as  hostile  to  abstract  specula- 
tion. He  was  inclined,  as  he  himself  recognized, 
to  take  up  with  what  was  new  and  paradoxical; 
and  he  was  the  sworn  enemy  of  all  that  is  not 
clear,  precise,  completely  and  universally  intel- 
ligible, and  in  harmony  with  that  famous  "com- 
mon sense"  which  has  always  been  the  guardian 
deity  of  British  thought.  Berkeley  approached 
philosophy,  at  least  in  the  first  period  of  his  ca- 
reer, as  a  good  positivist,  a  student  of  physical 
science,  and  a  reader  of  Locke.     He  sought  to 


50     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

affirm  nothing  save  that  which  is  actually  estab- 
lished. His  denial  of  the  independent  existence 
of  matter  looks  at  first  sight  like  a  metaphysical 
leap  foretokening  the  more  fatal  leaps  of  the 
German  idealists;  but  to  his  mind  it  was  merely 
the  consequence  of  a  more  exact  and  positive  ex- 
amination of  human  knowledge — a  conclusion 
that  might  serve  to  drive  the  cold  spectres  of 
metaphysics  out  of  every  head  and  every  school. 
"I  am  more  for  reality  than  anj^  other  philoso- 
pher," said  he  in  youth  in  his  Commonplace 
Book^  in  which  he  was  assembling  the  materials 
for  his  work  on  The  Principles  of  Human  Kiiowl- 
edge.  And  again:  "Mem.  To  be  eternally  ban- 
ishing Metaphysics,  etc.,  and  recalling  men  to 
Common  Sense."  ^ 

Furthermore,  like  a  good  Englishman  and  a 
good  practical  man,  he  scorned  all  that  which  is 
of  no  use  to  mankind.  For  him  the  word  "useless" 
was  tantamount  to  an  unanswerable  objection, 
a  definitive  condemnation.  The  value  of  his 
theories  lay,  to  his  mind,  in  their  theological  im- 
plications— ultimately,  therefore,  in  their  social 
and  moral  efficacy. 

This  practical  spirit  led  him  to  hate  anything 
long  or  complicated.  He  started  out  by  trying 
to  make  arithmetic  briefer  and  easier.    Later  he 

*  Ed.  by  A.  C.  Fraser  in  his  Life  and  Letters  of  Qeorge  Berkeley, 
Oxford,  1871,  p.  432. 

*  P.  455. 


BERKELEY  51 

tried  to  simplify  philosophy  by  canceling  the 
material  world  and  the  whole  repertory  of  scho- 
lasticism. Finally,  he  tried  to  reduce  and  to 
prune  Christian  apologetics  by  removing  those 
elements  which  were  too  speculative  or  merely 
oratorical.  His  program  in  philosophy,  in  short, 
was  this :  to  reach  results  useful  for  humanity  in 
the  least  possible  time  and  with  the  least  possible 
exertion. 

Another  proof  of  Berkeley's  positivist  spirit 
appears  in  his  keen  and  constant  criticism  of 
words.  Words,  he  said,  were  in  reality  respon- 
sible for  the  confusions  and  the  follies  of  earlier 
j)hilosophers.^ 

Berkeley  believed  also  in  the  experimental 
method,  and  was  one  of  the  first,  perhaps,  to  at- 
tempt personal  experiments  in  psychology.  One 
of  these  experiments  nearly  cost  him  his  hfe.  In 
his  youth  he  went  to  witness  a  hanging  at  Kil- 
kenny, and  on  his  way  home  he  began  to  wonder 
what  the  condemned  man's  sensations  must  have 
been  in  the  last  moments  of  his  life.  After  reach- 
ing Dublin,  he  decided  that  the  only  way  to  ob- 
tain any  exact  information  on  this  point  was  to 
make  a  trial  himself.  He  therefore  arranged  with 
a  friend  of  his,  a  Venetian  named  Contarini,  to 
attempt  an  experiment  in  hanging.     It  was  ar- 

^  See  especially  Commonplace  Book,  Eraser's  Edition,  pp.  434, 
435,  479;  Theory  of  Vision,  §  120;  the  introduction  to  the  Priwr- 
ciples  of  Human  Knowledge;  and  Alciphron,  Dialogue  VII,  §  2. 


52     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

ranged  that  at  a  given  signal  Contarini  should  let 
him  down  and  release  him  from  the  noose.  But 
as  soon  as  he  felt  the  knot  about  his  throat  he  lost 
consciousness,  so  that  he  could  not  give  the  signal 
they  had  agreed  upon.  Contarini  waited,  aston- 
ished at  the  young  philosopher's  power  of  re- 
sistance; but  he  finally  got  frightened,  and  let 
poor  Berkeley  down.  If  he  had  waited  a  few 
minutes  more,  the  world  would  have  had  to  wait 
a  while  for  the  theory  of  immaterialism.^ 

Berkeley  placed  great  reliance  on  the  examina- 
tion of  one's  own  experience,  if  made  directly, 
and  without  scholastic  prejudice.  The  way  in 
which  he  constantly  appeals  to  the  experience  of 
the  reader,  or  rather,  the  way  in  which  he  con- 
stantly orders  the  reader  to  perform  certain  ex- 
periments, constitutes,  indeed,  one  of  the  most 
original  features  of  his  method.  When  he  has 
set  forth  one  after  another,  in  that  clear  and  agile 
style  of  his,  the  arguments  that  seem  best  adapted 
to  support  his  thesis  or  to  overthrow  that  of  his 
adversary,  he  has  recourse  finally  to  the  intro- 
spective command.  "Do  you  yourself,  O  reader," 
he  says,  "think  of  this  matter  seriously,  and 
consider  whether  it  is  indeed  conceivable  or  pos- 
sible." Poor  Hylas  lends  himself  again  and  again 

^  It  would  not  have  had  to  wait  very  long,  for  there  appeared  in 
London  in  1713,  almost  at  the  same  time  as  Berkeley's  Dialogues, 
the  curious  work  of  A.  Collier  entitled:  Clavis  Universalis,  or,  A 
New  Inquiry  after  Truth,  Being  a  Demonstration  of  the  Noru* 
existence  and  Impossibility  of  an  External  World. 


BERKELEY  53 

to  this  forced  reflection,  and  after  a  moment  or 
two  confesses  humbly  to  Philonous  that  he  cannot 
in  fact  conceive  the  matter  in  question.  Not  all 
Berkeley's  readers,  it  is  to  be  hoj^ed,  will  be  as 
speedily  submissive  as  Hylas.  Nevertheless,  this 
frequent  insistence  on  stopping  to  consider  the 
real  meaning  of  a  term,  and  on  thinking  with 
one's  own  brain — instead  of  accepting  outworn 
words  and  truths  on  the  authority  of  tradition 
■ — is  one  of  the  best  lessons  to  be  learned  from  the 
youthful  works  of  the  good  Bishop  of  Cloyne. 


IV 


Yet  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Berkeley  is  not 
in  the  first  instance  a  philosopher,  and  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  he  approached  philosophy  with  a 
practical  rather  than  a  speculative  intention,  his 
name  is  indissolubly  associated  with  one  of  the 
greatest  philosophic  discoveries  of  the  eighteenth 
century:  the  definitive  reduction  of  matter  to 
spirit.  The  Cartesian  dualism  of  matter  and 
spirit  had  already  been  transformed  by  Male- 
branche  into  a  sort  of  spiritual  monism,  in  which 
matter  little  by  little  faded  away;  and  Locke 
had  already  reduced  secondary  qualities  to  sen- 
sations, and  the  concepts  of  cause  and  substance 
to  mere  relationships  between  ideas.    But  it  was 


54     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Berkeley  who  carried  the  imphcit  spirituality  of 
Descartes  to  its  logical  conclusion  and  extended 
the  arguments  of  Locke  to  primary  qualities. 
The  elements  of  his  immaterialism,  then,  were 
ready  for  his  hand,  but  to  Berkeley  himself  be- 
longs the  credit  of  having  extended  and  de- 
veloped the  theories  of  his  fathers  in  philosophy, 
the  credit  of  setting  forth  as  a  dominant  idea, 
clear,  central,  and  in  full  light,  the  great  prin- 
ciple that  the  world  consists  of  naught  save  spirit 
and  spiritual  activity. 

Even  here,  to  be  sure,  one  may  discern  Berke- 
ley's theological  preoccupations.  Matter  is  an 
ancient  enemy.  Philosophers  have  sought  in 
many  ways  to  discredit  it,  to  reduce  it  to  dust, 
to  make  it  an  obedient  slave  of  the  spirit,  but  it 
has  remained  an  insistent  annoyance  in  all  theistic 
philosophy.  If  matter  exists  independently  of 
spirit,  if  it  is  governed  by  its  own  laws  and  is 
capable  even  of  influencing  the  soul,  then  the 
position  of  God  becomes  embarrassing.  It  may 
of  course  be  said  that  God  created  matter,  and 
that  matter  must  obey  the  laws  established  by 
God;  but  the  role  and  the  dignity  of  God  are 
much  diminished  nevertheless.  We  can  conceive 
of  God  only  as  spirit;  and  if  the  world  is  com- 
posed for  the  most  part  of  matter,  which  is  the 
opposite  of  spirit,  we  may  readily  be  led  to  con- 
clude that  matter  is  indeed  the  only  reahty,  and 


BERKELEY  55 

that  thought  itself  is  merely  a  manifestation  of 
the  force  contained  in  matter.  Tendencies  such 
as  this  were  appearing  among  the  free-thinkers 
of  Berkeley's  time,  and  Berkeley  took  delight 
in  his  discovery  precisely  because  it  eliminated 
that  blind,  deaf  mass  of  matter  which  threatened 
to  exile  the  Supreme  Spirit  from  the  universe. 

Berkeley's  immaterialism,  then,  sprang  from 
a  theological  motive  and  was  utilized  for  a  theo- 
logical purpose :  but  his  great  principle  was  none 
the  less  true  in  itself,  and  its  truth  has  now  been 
accepted  by  the  better  part  of  the  thinking  world. 
I  shall  not  reassume  the  several  arguments  which 
Berkeley  invents,  expounds  and  repeats  in  the 
Principles  and  in  the  Dialogues.  Anyone  can 
find  them  in  a  good  history  of  philosophy,  or 
better  still,  in  Berkeley's  own  books,  which  are 
excellent  reading  and  by  no  means  difficult.  And 
those  who  desire  really  to  feel  the  discovery  of 
Berkeley  in  all  its  ecstatic  completeness,  should 
read  by  preference  the  obscure  and  hurried  notes 
of  the  Commonplace  Booh,  in  which,  amid  in- 
genuous remarks  and  ill-expressed  revelations  of 
the  pride  of  discovery,  one  can  witness  the  un- 
folding, or  rather  the  explosion,  of  the  theory  of 
immaterialism.  It  is  not  a  treatise  fairly  adorned 
and  skillfully  arranged,  like  a  French  garden; 
it  is  one  of  the  few  documents  that  reveal  philo- 
sophic thought   in  action — uncertain  at  times, 


5Q     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

often  animated,  and  always  beautiful,  like  every 
young  and  growing  thing. 

For  I  believe  that  it  is  not  enough,  even  in  the 
field  of  philosophy,  to  know  a  theory.  One  must 
live  it  and  feel  it  with  all  one's  soul,  must  fill 
one's  thought  with  it,  must  make  it,  for  the  time 
being,  the  content,  the  coloring  and  the  signifi- 
cance of  one's  whole  life.  Berkeley's  principle 
lends  itself  excellently  well  to  this  integral  pos- 
session of  truth.  When  a  man  truly  discovers 
the  great  principle — and  that  may  be  long  after 
he  has  known  it  at  second  hand — he  is  seized  by 
a  sort  of  idealistic  intoxication  which  transforms 
the  whole  world  for  him.  Think  for  a  moment, 
think  intensely  of  the  real  implications  of  these 
words:  "The  whole  world  is  composed  of  spirit/' 
All  that  had  seemed  solid  and  foreign  becomes 
fluid,  becomes  immediately  personal ;  the  contrast 
between  the  ego  and  the  world  is  diminished ;  the 
immense  and  formidable  mass  of  matter  is  trans- 
muted into  a  moving  picture  within  the  mind; 
the  ego  is  no  longer  a  drop  in  the  sea  or  a  leaf  in 
the  forest,  but  a  marvelous  mirror,  able  to  create 
for  itself  the  images  that  appear  in  it.  You  are 
master  of  the  world;  you  hold  within  yourself 
the  whole  range  of  future  possibility. 

From  this  idealistic  exaltation  one  may  pass 
easily  enough  into  the  absurdity  of  solipsism — 
and  this  I  know,  for  I  have  gone  through  that 


BERKELEY  57 

crisis.  But  the  great  liberating  and  suggestive 
value  of  Berkeley's  principle  remains:  we  are 
forced  to  recognize  that  the  world  cannot  bel 
formed  of  a  substance  different  from  that  of  our 
own  thought.  How,  indeed,  can  we  say  that  we 
know  the  world  if  we  admit  the  possibility  of 
knowing  something  foreign  to  thought,  some- 
thing which  is  not  thought?  From  this  principle, 
through  Hume,  the  great  reversal  of  Kant  and 
all  German  idealism  down  to  Hegel  are  derived ; 
human  thought  henceforth,  despite  all  the  pos- 
sible stupidities  of  science,  cannot  go  back  beyond 
this  point. 

Berkeley  himself,  it  is  true,  did  not  maintain 
his  principle  in  absolute  purity  to  the  end.  In 
the  Siris,  the  work  of  his  old  age,  though  he  re- 
mains a  spiritualist,  Plato  has  led  him  toward  the 
more  naturalistic  ideahsm  of  the  Greeks.  His 
ideas  are  no  longer  those  of  the  Principles,  they 
are  those  of  Plato;  and  between  the  Supreme 
Spirit  and  the  spirits  of  men  there  intervenes  the 
universal  fire  or  ether,  which  displays  the  chemi- 
cal and  biological  phenomena  of  the  universe, 
and  can  scarcely  be  reduced  to  spirit,  though  con- 
ceived as  a  divine  emanation. 

But  men  will  forget  the  erudite  neo-Platonism 
of  Berkeley's  old  age,  and  will  remember  the 
immaterialism  of  his  youth.  For  that  theory, 
though  expressed  in  empiric  language  by  a  posi- 


58     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

tive  mind,  has  been,  and  will  forever  be,  the 
implicit  premise  of  all  metaphysics. 


The  contemporaries  of  Berkeley,  however, 
were  not  quick  to  miderstand  the  gi^eatness  of 
his  discovery.  He  found  a  few  followers  in 
England,  and  a  few  more  in  America,  but  his 
works  were  read  rather  from  curiosity  than  for 
serious  purjioses.  His  famous  contemporary, 
Clarke,  confessed  that  he  could  not  answer  the 
pressing  arguments  of  Philonous,  but  declared 
at  the  same  time  that  he  refused  absolutely  to 
follow  Philonous  in  his  conclusions.  The  facts 
are  that  Berkeley  was  regarded  chiefly  as  a  pleas- 
ant maker  of  paradoxes  and  a  zealous  gentleman, 
and  that  he  won  fame  late  in  life,  and  then  only 
as  the  discoverer  of  the  virtues  of  tar-water. 

As  preacher  and  apologist  of  Christianity  he 
was  well  received;  but  even  the  Alciphron,  his 
summa,  brought  no  replies  from  the  discij^les  of 
the  unbelievers  whom  he  had  attacked — Collins 
and  Mandeville — though  it  did  bring  answers 
from  the  mathematicians,  offended,  it  would 
seem,  by  the  philosopher's  ironical  attack  on  the 
new  calculus  of  variations. 

But  the  religious  campaign  of  Berkeley  met  a 


BERKELEY  59 

real  need  in  the  English  life  of  his  time.  England 
is  to  all  appearances  the  most  conservative  coun- 
try in  the  world,  but  it  has  always  had  its  revolu- 
tions long  before  other  countries.  England  first 
went  through  the  political  revolution  for  the 
establishment  of  representative  government,  the 
theoretical  revolution  against  scholasticism,  and 
the  industrial  revolution  against  landed  prop- 
erty; and  in  the  eighteenth  century  it  went 
through  the  anti-religious  revolution  against 
Christianity.  England  had  had  its  Aufkldrung 
and  its  Encyclopedists  before  Berkeley  began  his 
work.  But  in  this,  as  in  the  other  English  revolu- 
tions, the  natural  moderation  of  the  race  and 
its  tendency  toward  balance  kept  the  movement 
from  attaining  an  excessive  development  and 
from  wreaking  such  destruction  as  to  compel  its 
adversaries  to  oppose  it  without  compromise.  So 
the  English  tendency  toward  unbelief  did  not 
degenerate,  but  remained  in  part  within  the  field 
of  religious  thought,  thus  obliging  the  apologists 
of  religion  to  seek  new  arguments,  and  to  jetti- 
son some  old  ones. 

In  the  apologetics  of  Berkeley  one  cannot 
readily  separate  the  part  of  morals  and  the  part 
of  religion,  and  it  is  not  always  easy  to  decide 
whether  he  is  insisting  on  morality  for  religious 
reasons,  or  defending  belief  in  God  for  moral  rea- 
sons.    His    position,    which    has    been    called 


60     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

"religious  utilitarianism,"  affords  a  new  instance 
of  that  practical-theoretical  dualism  to  which  I 
have  already  referred.  Nevertheless,  some  of  his 
views  on  the  problem  of  God  are  to  a  certain 
extent  independent  of  his  ethical  preoccupations. 
One  of  his  proofs  of  the  existence  of  a  supreme 
spirit  is  derived,  in  fact,  from  his  immaterialism. 
He  could  not  sink  to  the  absurdity  of  believing 
that  things  exist  only  as  we  see  them  and  hear 
them,  and  that  they  appear  and  disappear  ac- 
cording as  we  are  present  or  absent;  nor  could 
he  admit,  without  giving  up  his  entire  system, 
that  things  exist  in  themselves,  and  not  as  mere 
objects  of  thought.  When  things  are  not  seen 
by  us  they  must  then  exist  in  some  other  thought : 
either  in  the  thought  of  other  men,  or  in  the 
thought  of  God.  To  the  thought  of  man  belongs 
only  that  which  is  conscious  and  present.  All 
that  which  is  invisible,  all  that  which  is  uncon- 
scious, even  within  ourselves,  belongs  to  the 
activity  of  God. 

Berkeley  sought  also,  therefore,  to  reveal  the 
nature  of  God ;  and  in  the  works  of  his  last  period 
the  problem  of  the  significance  of  the  material 
world  is  replaced  by  the  problem  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  Supreme  Power  of  whom  the  ma- 
terial world  is  merely  a  manifestation.  And 
Berkeley  was  obhged,  in  consequence,  to  combat 
not  only  the  atheists  of  his  time,  but  also  the 


BERKELEY  61 

agnostics  and  the  mystics;  for  they,  reviving  a 
thesis  once  dear  to  the  Pseudo-Dionysius  and  to 
Erigena,  were  proclaiming  the  impossibihty  of 
talking  about  God,  of  determining  his  qualities 
and  attributes,  or  of  forming  any  idea  about  him 
whatsoever — thus  clearing  the  way  for  the  athe- 
ists, who  declared  triumphantly  that  there  was 
no  reason  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  being 
of  whom  nothing  could  be  known  and  nothing 
could  be  said.  Berkeley,  on  the  contrary,  felt 
the  need  of  a  positive  God,  a  God  of  whom  one 
could  speak,  a  God  who  should  be  in  particular 
a  regulator  of  morals.  So,  while  he  rejected  the 
anthropomorphic  and  metaphysical  analogy 
which  sees  in  God  merely  an  enlargement  of  man, 
he  turned  to  what  he  calls  the  proper  analogy, 
the  analogy,  that  is,  which  proceeds  from  the 
partial  perfections  of  which  there  is  some  trace 
in  man  to  the  absolute  perfections  which  must 
exist  in  God.  Berkeley's  God,  then,  is  neither 
the  wonder-working  God  of  the  crowd,  nor  the 
abstract  God  of  the  metaphysicians.  He  is  the 
God  of  wisdom  and  of  goodness,  an  ethical  God, 
precisely  suited  to  the  purposes  of  the  guardians 
of  morality.  And  here  begins  the  interweaving 
of  morality  and  religion.  We  seek  the  good,  but 
the  good  we  seek  is  an  eternal — not  a  transitory 
— good,  and  we  know  that  the  end  established  by 
a  just  and  good  God  must  in  itself  be  good.    Con- 


62     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

sequently,  the  best  means  of  attaining  eternal 
felicity  is  to  discover  the  nature  of  the  divine 
will  as  expressed  in  natural  and  in  moral  law, 
and  to  obey  that  will  in  all  respects.  We  are  to 
believe  in  God  because  only  thus  may  we  obtain 
the  imperishable  good.  Rehgion  is  useful,  there- 
fore it  must  be  true — yet  after  all  the  very  basis 
of  its  utility  is  its  truth. 

In  the  Siris  this  somewhat  narrow  religious 
utilitarianism  becomes  broader.  God  is  still  the 
wise  and  good  Ruler,  and  He  is  still  the  infinite 
Spirit  who  provides  finite  spirits  with  their  ideas : 
but,  thanks  to  the  influence  of  Plato,  He  has  be- 
come the  cosmic  principle,  the  creator  of  that 
universal  ether  which  explains  the  life  of  the 
world  better  than  any  mechanistic  theory.  The 
Master  of  Morals  has  become  a  Demiurge;  and 
beyond  him  the  philosopher,  liberated  for  the 
moment  from  the  necessities  of  apologetics,  be- 
lieves that  he  can  perceive  the  very  essence  of 
divinity,  the  ineffable  One  of  the  neo-Platonists. 

But  though  Berkeley  rises  to  great  heights  in 
the  last  pages  of  the  Siris,  he  is  less  original  there 
than  elsewhere.  His  importance  in  the  history 
of  English  rehgious  thought  consists  primarily 
in  his  reconciliation  between  the  divine  will  and 
the  human  desire  for  well-being.  For  Locke,  the 
validity  of  moral  law  is  derived  from  the  omnipo- 
tence of  God ;  for  Paley,  that  validity  lies  purely 


BERKELEY  63 

in  the  goodness  and  usefulness  of  its  practical 
consequences.  Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  cre- 
ates a  God  who  is  primarily  ethical,  and  tends 
toward  a  system  of  morahty  which  is  primarily 
religious.  He  appeals  to  utility  to  induce  men 
to  believe  in  God ;  he  appeals  to  divinity  to  com- 
pel them  to  goodness. 

This  conception  may  seem  to  have  been  dic- 
tated primarily  by  practical  exigencies;  but  those 
who  have  followed  the  latest  developments  of 
Christian  apologetics  will  realize  that  in  this  re- 
spect also  Berkeley  was  a  precursor  of  the 
moderns.  The  religious  pragmatism  of  certain 
Anglo-Saxon  thinkers  is  to  be  found  in  germ  in 
the  works  of  the  Bishop  of  Cloyne ;  and  Le  Roy's 
recent  and  profound  attempt  to  escape  from  the 
scholastic  demonstrations  of  the  existence  of  God 
and  to  form  a  new  concept  of  divinity  has  led 
precisely  to  the  identification  of  God  with  that 
instinct  for  moral  progress  which  is  immanent  in 
the  human  soul. 


VI 
SPENCER 


The  doctrine  of  individualism  has  had  alto- 
gether too  many  devotees.  Each  of  them  has 
given  it  a  new  dress,  motto,  attitude,  name,  or 
seal,  until  the  very  mass  of  attributes  has  come 
to  obscure  the  true  nature  of  the  doctrine.  All 
men  boast  today  of  their  individualism :  conserva- 
tive philosophers  in  search  of  theoretical  weapons 
of  defense;  liberals  and  liberators  who  seek  to 
bring  free  trade  and  competition  under  the  ban- 
ner of  the  struggle  for  existence ;  mild  socialists, 
like  Fourniere,  who  see  no  incompatibility  be- 
tween the  ideas  of  collectivism  and  individual- 
ism, and  would  enthrone  Nietzsche  among  the 
prophets  of  socialism;  and  anarchists,  dreamers 
or  actors,  who  plunder  Max  Stirner  by  way  of 
preparing  themselves  for  the  great  destruction. 

In  a  history  of  individualism  you  would  find 
the  soldiers  of  fortune  of  the  Renaissance  beside 
the  disheveled  philosophers  of  the  Stunn  und 

64 


SPENCER  65 

Brang;  abstract  theorists  like  Fichte  and  poets 
of  the  imagination  Hke  Goethe;  supporters  of 
Prussian  aristocracy  like  Hegel  and  revolution- 
ary radicals  like  Ibsen;  mystics  like  Carlyle  and 
skeptics  like  Renan ;  dialecticians  like  Stirner  and 
lyrists  like  Nietzsche.  Hippolyte  Taine,  for  all 
his  talk  of  race  and  of  tradition,  is  as  strong  for 
the  individual  as  is  the  vagabond  Gorky,  dream- 
ing in  Russian  solitudes  fantastic  dreams  of 
gypsy  anarchy.  And  the  weighty  evolutionary 
learning  of  Spencer  joins  with  the  elegant  sub- 
tleties of  Maurice  Barres  to  form  part  of  the  cur- 
rent conception  of  individualism. 

Clearly,  then,  individualism  cannot  be  a  single 
and  unchanging  thing:  too  many  spirits  have 
exalted  it.  We  must  confess,  as  honest  indi- 
vidualists, that  there  is  no  common  and  accepted 
type  of  individualism.  And  there  could  be  per- 
haps no  better  proof  of  the  profound  and  con- 
tinual diversity  of  men  than  the  fact  that  we 
give  a  single  name  and  symbol  to  this  many- 
colored  flowering  of  forms  and  of  ideals. 

But  perhaps  the  variety  is  not  so  great  as  it 
seems.  Is  it  not  possible  that  we  are  abusing 
terms  when  we  class  as  individualistic  certain 
theories  which  superficially  proclaim  the  preemi- 
nence of  the  individual? 

I  can  hardly  repress  this  suspicion,  for  in- 


66     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

stance,  in  the  presence  of  the  highly  vaunted 
individuahsm  of  Spencer. 

To  many  it  has  seemed  that  the  philosopher 
of  Derby  is  the  only  ideological  athlete  of  the 
second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  who  is 
worthy  to  compete  with  the  prophets  of  collec- 
tivism. His  name  has  become  the  bulwark  of 
the  bourgeoisie.  His  critique  of  the  state  has 
provided  material  for  propagandist  pamphlets. 
His  evolutionary  formula  has  been  wielded 
against  the  dogmas  of  equality  and  historical 
materialism.  In  the  shadow  of  his  synthesis  con- 
servatives have  felt  themselves  secure.  The  Man 
versus  the  State  has  been  the  delight  of  laissez- 
faire  politicians.  His  Data  of  Ethics  has  lulled 
the  hearts  of  those  whose  egotism  is  not  yet  dead. 

What  cries  of  protest  went  up  when  Ferri, 
moved  by  a  cowardly  mania  for  finding  allies 
and  supports  for  socialism,  tried  to  drag  Spencer 
behind  the  triumphal  chariot  of  collectivism! 

Yet  no  one  has  seriously  raised  the  question 
whether  Spencer  could  rightly  be  called  an  indi- 
vidualist. No  one  has  sought  to  discover  whether 
the  spirit  of  Spencer's  philosophy  is  in  accord 
with  our  most  immediate  purposes.  We  have 
read  the  chapters  in  which  he  justifies  egotism 
and  inveighs  against  the  domination  of  the  state, 
and  we  have  read  no  further.  In  so  doing,  we 
have  done  ill. 


SPENCER  67 

I  find  myself  obliged  to  confess  that  Spencer 
is  far  less  of  an  individualist  than  his  admirers 
appear  to  believe.  But  since  the  noblest  charac- 
teristic of  an  individualist  is  his  self-sufficiency, 
his  admirers  will  surely  waste  no  tears  for  the 
loss  of  their  ally. 

He  had  been,  to  be  sure,  a  powerful  ally.  Be- 
ing on  Spencer's  side  meant  being  in  accord  with 
the  most  influential  recent  philosophic  doctrine, 
the  doctrine  of  monistic  and  evolutionary  positiv- 
ism. But  the  very  thing  which  the  conservatives, 
in  their  desire  to  be  in  accord  with  approved 
thought,  have  failed  to  discover,  is  that  this  con- 
ception cannot  rationally  be  made  to  serve  as 
a  support  for  individualism.  They  have  copied 
the  pattern  of  the  latest  fashion,  but  that  fashion 
was  never  meant  for  figures  such  as  theirs.  In- 
dividualism is  borrowing  for  itself  a  uniform 
designed  by  collectivists  for  the  use  of  collec- 
tivists.  That  is  what  monism  is.  The  dogma  of 
equality  in  the  field  of  democratic  sociology  is 
the  counterpart  of  the  dogma  of  unity  in  the 
field  of  democratic  cosmology. 

I  have  called  Spencer  an  evolutionary  monist. 
I  might  as  well  have  left  out  the  adjective.  The 
theory  of  evolution  is  merely  one  of  the  methods 
by  which  philosophers — those  deadly  enemies  of 
the  particular — have  tried  to  prove  unity.  Spen- 
cer, like  all  philosophers^  is  fundamentally  a 
monist,   both  in  his  goal  and  in  his  methods. 


68     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Philosophy,  indeed,  despite  its  apparent  variety, 
is  conservative,  constant,  pertinacious.  Phi- 
losophy is  like  a  romantic  old  lady  who  to  the  day 
of  her  death  cherishes  the  dream  of  her  girlhood : 
the  dream  of  reducing  all  things  to  one  single 
thing,  of  denying  all  differences  and  all  distinc- 
tions— ^that  is,  frankly,  of  annihilating  things. 
The  philosopher  desires  to  see  the  world  issue  and 
unfold,  like  a  gigantic  plant,  from  one  single 
seed;  or  seeks  to  trace  all  appearances  of  varia- 
tion back  to  some  vague  primordial  mystery 
wherein  reason  may  find  a  certain  pleasure, 
though  sense  be  lost. 

Thus  from  Thales  to  the  latest  Germanic 
Weltanschauung  the  constant  philosophic  ten- 
dency has  been  to  make  reality  illusory  and  to 
make  the  illusion  real — that  is,  to  sacrifice  va- 
riety to  oneness,  the  particular  to  the  universal. 
And  Spencer,  though  his  acquaintance  with  the 
history  of  philosophy  was  very  limited,  moved  in 
the  same  way.  Setting  aside  the  unknowable — 
established  as  a  category  for  several  compelling 
reasons,  but  chiefly  in  order  to  escape  an  embar- 
rassing dualism — he  took  the  knowable  in  hand 
in  the  endeavor  to  reduce  it  to  one  single  prin- 
ciple. Force,  and  to  one  single  law,  Evolution. 
His  point  of  departure  was  the  homogeneous. 
From  the  homogeneous,  that  is,  from  the  unique, 
everything  is  derived,  everything  has  unfolded. 
All  that  which  to  us  seems  varied,  diverse,  heter- 


SPENCER  69 

ogeneous,  came  out  of  the  great  cosmic  heart  of 
the  primal  homogeneity.  In  the  beginning  there 
was  but  one;  later,  and  for  reasons  which  we  see 
none  too  clearly,  plurality  ventured  to  intrude, 
for  the  confusion  of  the  world. 

Plurality,  in  short,  is  admitted,  but  not  de- 
sired. The  idea  of  differentiation  which  recurs 
so  often  in  Spencer's  explanations  is  not  the  goal, 
but  an  insistent  datum  which  the  philosopher 
seeks  as  best  he  can  to  trace  back  to  its  fabulous 
origin,  to  the  undifferentiated  beginning — that 
Cockayne  of  monistic  meditation.  The  diverse 
is  an  object  to  be  explained  or  reduced,  not  a 
goal  to  be  achieved — it  lacks,  indeed,  the  stability 
that  one  desires  in  a  goal.  By  the  side  of  evo- 
lution appears  the  inverse  process,  involution, 
which  leads  back  to  the  original  vagueness.  All 
things  issue  from  the  homogeneous,  and  return 
to  the  homogeneous:  there  you  have  the  syn- 
thetic formula  of  evolutionism. 

Spencer  then,  like  all  monists,  like  all  philoso- 
phers, has  failed  to  grasp  the  specific  character- 
istic of  reality.  Truth,  multiplicity,  that  which 
permits  one  to  compare  and  contrast  objects — 
that  is,  really  to  know  them — is  regarded  as  a 
deviation  and  a  mere  appearance,  a  deceit  and 
a  prejudice.  In  other  words,  the  i7idividual  is  a 
dream.  That  which  is  called  personal,  that  which 
seems  to  us  particular,  specific,  peculiar  to  one 
man,  is  reducible  to  other  elements,  may  be  found 


70     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

in  other  men.  Men  themselves  are  reducible  to 
more  inclusive  species,  and  these  to  one  single 
species.  And  so  on  from  the  organic  to  the  in- 
organic, and  at  last  to  the  cold  universalism  of 
Energy. 

If  evolution  is  an  instrument  of  a  supreme 
unity,  if  all  varieties  are  reducible,  if  all  chasms 
may  be  filled,  if  nature  is  continuous  and  unin- 
terrupted, then  what  the  scholastics  used  to  call 
the  ineffable  individual  disappears  like  a  child's 
dream.  The  individual,  the  person,  the  man 
unique,  the  self,  does  not  and  cannot  exist,  is 
but  a  legend  denied  by  science,  destroyed  by 
philosophy,  abjured  by  thought.  In  short,  while 
the  individuahst  feels  the  need  of  affirming,  ac- 
centuating, and  increasing  diversities,  the  monist, 
on  the  contrary,  tends  to  attenuate,  to  forget  and 
to  deny  all  differences.  Their  interests  are  op- 
posed.    Their  purposes  are  antipodal. 

Thus  the  collectivism  of  sociology  finds  in  mon- 
ism its  perfect  metaphysical  counterpart. 

Positivism,  like  democracy,  is  a  leveler.  It 
ferrets  out  facts — tiny  facts,  by  preference.  The 
triumph  of  Comte  was  brought  about  by  his  en- 
thronement of  things.  The  higher  activities  of 
the  spirit,  sentiment  and  will,  have  been  dispos- 
sessed; their  place  has  been  usurped  by  fact,  by 
representation,  by  all  that  which  is  least  personal. 
And  positivism,  in  its  search  for  law,  has  sought 
to  remove  all  irregularity  and  all  caprice.     It 


SPENCER  71 

has  enrolled  the  world  in  regiments,  has  put  facts 
in  uniform,  and  has  thrust  the  exceptional  into  the 
prison  of  the  absurd. 

In  Spencer,  then,  monist  and  positivist,  the 
individualists  cannot  find  a  sure  defense.  If  they 
still  share  the  common  desire  to  win  a  meta- 
physical fortress  for  themselves,  with  the  uncon- 
fessed  purpose  of  justifying  a  posteriori  their 
instinct  for  personal  life,  they  must  turn  not  to 
Spencer,  but  to  some  pluralistic  doctrine.  And 
if  they  do  not  find  the  right  doctrine,  they  will 
have  to  invent  it. 


When  Spencer  left  the  heights  whereon  meta- 
physics battle  with  the  incomprehensible,  and 
came  down  to  consider  with  greater  clearness 
and  with  equal  profundity  the  things  of  earth, 
the  life  of  men,  he  did  not  succeed  in  forgetting 
or  discarding  those  intellectual  habits  which  had 
revealed  themselves  in  his  metaphysical  specu- 
lation. 

Indeed,  Spencer  had  developed  those  habits  in 
sociology  before  he  applied  them  to  ontology. 
His  practical  bent  had  led  him  very  early  toward 
the  consideration  of  human  groupings  and  to 
the  writing  of  his  Social  Statics  (1851) ,  in  which 
— it  is  well  to  remember — he  proposed  the  nation- 
alization of  landed  property.      The  sociologist 


72     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

finds  it  impossible  to  disregard  the  group,  and 
the  student  of  the  group  finds  it  impossible  to 
disregard  the  elements  common  to  the  individuals 
who  compose  the  group.  He  is  thus  led  to  fix 
attention  on  elements  of  likeness,  and  to  remove 
attention  from  elements  of  difference — to  be,  in 
short,  a  seeker  of  contacts  and  affinities  rather 
than  of  chasms  and  aversions. 

The  very  first  interests  of  Spencer,  then,  in- 
dicate that  fundamental  characteristic  which 
makes  him  in  reality  an  opponent  of  individual- 
ism: his  love  for  unity  and  for  likeness. 

This  affirmation  will  seem  strange  to  those 
who  are  wont  to  consider  Spencer  as  the  prophet 
of  individualism  a  outrance.  But  your  true  indi- 
viduahst  doesn't  write  sociology.  If  he  writes 
at  all,  he  writes  "confessions,"  recording  the  ad- 
ventures of  his  egotism.  Shall  we  say  that  he 
disregards  men?  Not  that,  for  an  individual- 
ism which  simply  carried  off  a  little  slice  of  the 
world  would  be  the  individualism  of  a  mole.  The 
individualist  considers  men  as  servitors,  as  instru- 
ments to  grasp,  as  animals  to  drive  in  leash,  and 
not  as  objects  of  knowledge.  In  a  word,  your 
true  individualist  does  not  write  history:  he 
makes  it.  He  lives  the  life  of  society,  and  does 
not  stop  to  theorize.  He  is  a  Pandolfo  Petrucci 
or  a  Napoleon,  not  a  Comte  or  a  Spencer. 

Spencer,  however,  chose  the  other  course:  he 
turned  to  the  study  of  men  in  their  actions  and 


SPENCER  73 

their  relations.  As  man  of  letters  he  wrote  of 
others,  not  of  himself.  He  had  individualism 
enough  to  write  books  on  life,  but  not  to  achieve 
in  life.  Neither  as  man  of  words  nor  as  man 
of  deeds  was  he  in  reality  personal,  individual. 
As  a  scientist  he  bowed  before  facts ;  as  a  meta- 
physician, before  the  unknowable;  as  a  moral- 
ist, before  the  immutable  truth  of  natural  law. 
His  philosophy  is  formed  of  fear,  of  ignorance, 
and  of  obedience :  virtues  from  the  point  of  view 
of  Christ,  but  vices  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  individualist.  Spencer  was  no  more  nor  less 
than  a  forger  of  individualism. 

The  common  belief  that  Spencer  defended  the 
individual  comes  wholly  from  his  criticism  of  the 
domination  of  the  State.  The  English  philoso- 
pher is  in  fact  one  of  the  most  tenacious  assail- 
ants of  governmental  tyranny.  Valiant  indeed 
are  his  onslaughts  against  the  new  Leviathan 
that  seeks  to  swallow  all  activities  and  all  persons 
in  the  mechanistic  mass  of  its  bureaucratic  ten- 
tacles. 

The  little  book  called  The  Man  versus  the 
State  is  excellent  reading.  It  is  a  pleasure  to 
take  it  up  after  the  imposition  of  some  idiotic 
penalty,  or  a  debate  on  Sunday  closing:  for 
though  the  muzzling  powers  of  the  State  in- 
crease, its  fundamental  weakness  and  absurdity 
are  here  revealed. 

Yet  even  this,  intelligent  and  edifying  though 


74     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

it  is,  cannot  be  called  individualism.  Spencer, 
to  be  sure,  attacks  the  State,  and  the  State  is 
a  collective  entity ;  but  the  reasons  which  underlie 
his  attack  remain  to  be  examined.  And  his  prin- 
cipal reason  is  not  the  fact  that  the  State  is  a 
collective  entity  and  tends,  as  such,  to  enthrall 
the  individual;  his  principal  reason  is  that  the 
State  is  a  collective  entity  which  does  not  func- 
tion well.  His  scorn  for  governmental  action  is 
based  on  the  fact  that  it  costs  too  much  and  does 
not  yield  enough.  Without  the  stimulus  of  com- 
petition it  grows  torpid,  it  falls  asleep,  it  becomes 
needlessly  complicated,  spasmodic,  cumbersome. 
He  criticizes  the  State  as  an  engineer  might 
criticize  an  old-fashioned  engine  which  uses  much 
coal  and  produces  little  energy.  The  engineer, 
that  is,  does  not  object  to  the  engine  as  an  engine, 
but  to  a  defect  in  its  functioning.  If  the  machine 
worked  well,  the  engineer  would  not  care  whether 
it  were  old  or  new,  whether  it  were  composed  of 
few  or  many  pieces.  So  it  is  with  the  State. 
Spencer  does  not  oppose  it  because  it  is  a  State, 
a  group,  a  collective  and  dominant  entity — but 
because  it  consumes  too  many  pounds  sterling 
and  yields  but  scanty  benefits. 

Furthermore,  he  does  not  by  any  means  op- 
pose all  collective  entities.  He  merely  criticizes 
one  form  of  collective  entity,  the  State,  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  other  forms,  such  as  societies  and 
private  companies.     He  knows  that  public  util- 


SPENCER  75 

ities,  such  as  postal  service  or  the  distribution  of 
energy,  of  light,  or  of  education,  cannot  be  carried 
on  by  individuals  acting  independently,  but  de- 
mand union  and  cooperation;  and  he  believes 
that  a  multiplicity  of  private  organizations,  made 
keen  by  competition  and  by  the  more  immediate 
control  of  their  component  members,  may  have 
better  success  than  a  monopolistic  State  in  satis- 
fying individual  needs.  But  with  all  this  we 
are  still  within  the  realm  of  unionism ;  there  is  no 
indication  here  of  the  development  of  a  truly  in- 
dividual point  of  view. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  Spencer  is  trying  to 
substitute  voluntary  for  compulsory  coopera- 
tion, and  that  individual  liberty  is  thus  safe- 
guarded, since  we  can  turn  from  one  society  to 
another  when  the  first  ho  longer  satisfies  us.  For 
since  certain  services  are  necessary  for  all,  one 
must  accept  a  society  perforce  just  as  one  be- 
comes part  of  a  nation  perforce;  and  since  the 
enterprises  in  question  are  necessarily  on  a  large 
scale,  the  societies  cannot  be  numerous,  and  one's 
choice  is  therefore  limited.  Furthermore,  they 
may  unite  as  trusts  for  their  own  advantage,  and 
to  the  disadvantage  of  the  consumer.  They  may 
be  as  tyrannical  as  the  State.  And  if  it  be  said 
that  one  may  go  from  one  society  to  another,  can- 
not the  same  be  said  with  regard  to  States?  A 
man  who  is  unwilling  to  accept  the  laws  of  one 
State  may  go  to  another  and  assume  another 


76     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

nationality;  and  as  States  are  governed  differ- 
ently, it  may  be  claimed  that  there  is  in  theory 
a  rivalry  between  States  just  as  there  is  in  theory 
a  rivalry  between  private  companies. 

In  short,  Spencer's  criticism  is  directed  rather 
against  the  excesses  of  governmental  domination 
than  against  government  in  itself.  To  say  noth- 
ing of  the  fact  that  some  services  are  so  funda- 
mental and  so  complex  that  a  private  society 
could  not  undertake  them,  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  Spencer,  in  the  heat  of  his  anti-governmental 
rage,  nevertheless  assigns  to  the  State  the  all- 
important  function  of  guarding  life  and  prop- 
erty— that  is,  of  guarding  all  that  is  worth  guard- 
ing. And  the  fact  that  Spencer  assigns  tliis 
particular  function  to  the  State  proves  that  his 
hatred  for  the  State  is  partial  and  superficial, 
not  deep  and  definitive.  If  I  dislike  and  dis- 
trust a  man  I  do  not  ask  him  to  become  the 
guardian  of  my  life  and  the  custodian  of  my  prop- 
erty. Yet  it  is  to  the  State  that  Spencer  gives 
this  confidential  task;  for  he  makes  the  State  the 
policeman,  the  judge,  and  the  protector  of  human 
life,  allows  it  indeed  the  most  intimate  and  vital 
offices.  He  behaves  toward  the  State  like  a 
hourru  bienfaisant:  he  complains,  grumbles,  and 
protests,  but  in  the  end  he  yields  on  the  most  im- 
portant points.  He  attacks  the  State  only  to 
exalt  it.    He  attacks  public  collective  entities  only 


SPENCER  77 

to  put  private  collective  entities  in  their  place. 
JNIere  substitution,  then,  not  demoUtion. 

It  has  well  been  observed  that  many  men  com- 
plain of  the  tyranny  of  the  State,  and  yet  say 
not  a  word  against  the  far  more  powerful  tyranny 
of  society.  Social  dogmas,  precisely  because  they 
are  not  fixed  in  laws  and  regulations,  are  more 
oppressive  and  more  irresistible  than  the  prin- 
ciples of  State  control.  Against  these  latter 
there  is  some  defense;  they  are  matters  of  law. 
Against  social  dogmas,  reenforced  by  pubhc 
opinion,  there  is  no  resource  save  useless  and 
solitary  revolt.  If  it  were  really  desirable  and 
possible  to  liberate  the  individual,  one  would  have 
to  begin  by  uprooting  all  those  weeds  of  collec- 
tive superstition  which  do  not  appear  in  codes 
of  law,  and  are  not  external  and  tangible,  but 
reveal  themselves  as  the  torments  of  an  inherited 
conscience,  and  are  internal,  invisible,  and  for 
the  most  part  unrecognized. 

In  short,  either  we  are  individualists  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word — and  then  we  should  at- 
tack not  only  the  State  but  any  form  whatsoever 
of  human  regimentation,  of  subjection  to  rules 
and  convention — or  else  we  seek  to  preserve  a 
little  liberty  and  a  little  union,  a  little  of  the  in- 
dividual and  a  little  of  the  State,  a  little  of  the 
person  and  a  little  of  the  group.  In  that  case 
we  are  taking  half  measures,  we  are  temporizing 


78     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

like  the  prudent  bourgeois  that  we  are — but  we 
are  not  individualists. 

Some  one  at  this  point  will  raise  his  brows, 
and  glimpse  between  the  lines  of  my  prose  the 
dagger  of  a  Caserio  or  the  djTiamite  of  a  Rava- 
chol.  He  need  not  fear.  I  am  not  a  half-anarch- 
ist, like  Spencer,  nor  a  complete  anarchist,  like 
Kropotkin  or  ]\Ialatesta.  Indeed,  I  am  hostile 
to  Spencer  precisely  because,  failing  to  under- 
stand individualism,  he  slips  toward  anarchy. 

It  is  high  time  to  stop  the  repetition  of  the 
statement  that  anarchy  represents  the  ideal  of 
the  greatest  possible  liberty.  Liberty  consists 
in  the  ability  to  do  certain  things,  that  is,  to  en- 
joy and  possess  certain  properties;  and  since 
property  is  by  its  nature  limited,  the  giving  of 
all  liberties  to  all  men,  the  granting  to  all  men 
of  the  right  to  perform  all  acts,  would  simply 
mean  the  restriction  of  the  share  of  each — ^to  the 
benefit  of  none  and  the  injury  of  many.  People 
ingenuously  believe  that  liberty  is  a  thing  to  be 
distributed,  and  that  it  would  be  well  to  give 
it  to  all  men.  Universal  liberty,  on  the  contrary, 
would  result  in  a  greater  number  of  unimpeded 
actions,  that  is  to  say,  in  universal  helplessness. 
The  anarchistic  ideal  is  not  only  impracticable; 
it  is  self-contradictor5^ 

Now  Spencer,  in  his  dream  of  a  future  altru- 
istic humanity,  without  laws  and  without  govern- 
ment,   lias    consciously    or    unconsciously    ap- 


SPENCER  79 

proached  the  anarchistic  ideal,  has  displayed  an 
individualism  which  is  anti-personal,  like  that  of 
all  anarchists.  For  anarchists  have  failed  as  yet 
to  understand  that  since  the  liberty  of  all  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms  the  only  liberty  which  can 
be  established  is  the  liberty  of  a  limited  number 
— that  is  to  say  the  power  of  a  limited  number, 
the  government  of  a  class.  Those  who  are  free 
exercise  power,  that  is,  they  possess  the  greater 
part  of  all  properties,  including  the  labor  of 
other  men.  And  it  is  clear  that  any  society  in 
which  a  few  are  free  must  necessarily  contain 
many  who  are  slaves. 

Despotism  is  the  only  practical  ideal  of  an- 
archy. Alexander  the  Great,  for  instance,  was 
far  more  free  than  any  citizen  of  modern  Europe, 
precisely  because  he  stood  alone,  or  almost  alone, 
in  the  power  to  command  and  to  possess.  True 
individualism  consists,  then,  in  counseling  sub- 
jection, not  rebellion;  in  making  slaves,  not  revo- 
lutionists; instruments,  not  critics.  Individual- 
ism, the  affirmation  of  full  personal  power,  is  in 
the  nature  of  things  reserved  for  the  few,  and 
it  is  well  that  the  rest  of  mankind  should  not  get 
the  idea  of  liberty  into  their  heads.  Anarchy, 
in  short,  turns  out  to  be  in  reality  an  apology 
for  czarism,  comes  down  from  an  impossible  uni- 
versalism  to  an  easily  realized  aristocracy,  from 
the  theoretical  liberty  of  all  to  the  practical  power 
of  the  few. 


80     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Spencer,  in  his  fight  against  the  domina- 
tion of  the  State  and  the  army,  was  but  a  super- 
ficial and  prehistoric  individuahst,  sentimental 
and  abstract  rather  than  analytical  and  prac- 
tical. His  individualism  was  empty  and  half- 
hearted. 

Despite  his  scientific  pretensions,  Spencer  was 
guided  more  by  sentiment  than  by  reason.  In- 
stead of  seeing  clearly  the  need  for  realities  be- 
neath words,  he,  like  all  philanthropists,  sought 
universal  love,  altruism,  and  progress.  In  the 
last  years  of  his  life,  perhaps  in  conscious  recog- 
nition of  this  weakness,  he  sang  the  praises  of 
sentiment  in  his  Facts  and  Comvients — forget- 
ting the  intellectualistic  psychology  of  his  youth. 

Sentiment  appears  too  in  those  moral  analyses 
at  the  end  of  the  Data  of  Ethics  which  have  been 
cited  in  support  of  the  legend  of  his  individual- 
ism. He  did  indeed  attempt  a  rehabilitation  of 
egotism  in  so  far  as  it  tends  to  altruism — of  that 
egotism  which  through  ego-altruistic  sentiments 
tends  toward  a  final  and  universal  altruism.  The 
ultimate  goal  is  to  think  of  others;  it  is  well  to 
begin  by  thinking  of  one's  self.  The  ego  is  again 
subordinate  to  others,  the  individual  to  the  com- 
mon herd. 

Now  for  the  true  individualist  there  are  pos- 
sible but  two  attitudes  with  regard  to  men:  that 
of  the  rebel  and  that  of  the  dominator,  that  of 
the  libertarian  and  that  of  Cassar.     Those  who 


SPENCER  81 

cannot  dominate  or  possess  choose  the  former  at- 
titude, and  seek  to  destroy  those  who  do  possess 
and  dominate.  And  these,  in  turn,  seek  to 
conquer  more  and  more,  and  to  ward  off  their 
enemies  while  they  endeavor  to  increase  their 
domination  over  things  and  men. 

Spencer,  a  middle-class  spirit  without  courage 
and  without  audacity,  remains  dangling  in  the 
limbo  of  antinomies,  wavering  between  the  ne- 
cessity of  government  and  the  lamentation  of 
the  oppressed.  He  was  the  pedantic  Hamlet  of 
a  half -intelligent  and  compromising  bourgeoisie. 


VII 

F.  C.  S.  SCHILLER 

In  the  sleepy  world  of  modern  philosophy 
F.  C.  S.  Schiller  stands  for  an  idea  which  is  very 
simple,  and  has  for  that  very  reason  been  long 
forgotten:  the  idea  that  theories  should  lead  to 
practical  results.  Philosophy  should  be  one  of 
the  moving  forces  of  the  world.  Even  specula- 
tive thought  should  be  an  instrument  of  change. 
Pure  reason,  rigid  and  static  rationalism,  and 
prudent  objectivism  are  but  myths  or  absurdi- 
ties. There  is  no  such  thing  as  pure  reason: 
reason  is  always  impure,  at  least  if  one  regards 
sentiment,  purpose,  and  will,  as  elements  of  im- 
purity. The  immobile  rationalism  that  claims 
to  have  pinned  down  truth  in  its  theodicies,  as 
a  boy  pins  down  a  butterfly,  is  but  the  twaddle 
of  degenerate  Leibnitzians.  The  passive  objec- 
tivism that  waits  resignedly  to  receive  impres- 
sions, contemplates  the  slow  formation  of  truth, 
and  scorns  those  who  go  out  to  seek  for  truth, 
to  pursue  it,  to  impose  it,  to  create  it,  to  subject 
and  master  things  instead  of  merely  measuring  or 
counting  them — such  passive  objectivism  is  the 

82 


r.  C.  S.  SCHILLER  83 

hypocritical  method  of  a  generation  of  weaklings. 
Truth  must  be  provoked,  I  might  almost  say 
invented;  and  when  it  has  been  invented  it  must 
be  made  real  and  concrete  through  the  dominion 
which  the  spirit  must  incessantly  exercise  over 
material  things. 

Such,  in  somewhat  sharper  emphasis,  are  the 
ideas  which  recur  throughout  the  keen  and  im- 
aginative writings  of  the  Oxford  philosopher.  In 
Axioms  as  Postulates,  which  he  published,  to- 
gether with  essays  by  some  of  his  friends,  in  the 
volume  called  Personal  Idealism  (1902),  there 
appears  an  irreverent  analysis  of  those  truths 
which  are  traditionally  called  necessary,  and  an 
intimate  history  of  axioms.  Axioms,  he  shows, 
are  but  hypotheses  which  have  proved  so  useful, 
and  have  succeeded  so  well  in  displacing  all  rival 
hypotheses,  that  today  they  seem  indispensable: 
they  are  merely  empiric  propositions  or  tele- 
ological  conventions  which  have  proved  victorious 
in  the  struggle  for  acceptance  as  truth. 

In  other  words,  the  origin  of  those  concepts 
which  we  tend  to  regard  as  the  eternal  armor 
of  reason  is  purely  practical  and  utilitarian.  That 
which  has  proved  most  serviceable  has  asserted 
itself  and  has  survived.  Everything  else  has 
been  thrown  into  the  enormous  waste-basket  of 
the  insignificant  and  the  erroneous.  Knowledge 
must  serve  life.  Life,  then,  may  suppress  such 
knowledge  as  harms  or  does  not  help  it. 


84     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

In  his  essay  on  Useless  Knowledge,  the  second 
of  those  gathered  under  the  title  Humanism,^ 
he  reduces  to  three  types  the  conceptions  which 
the  greatest  philosophers  have  held  of  the  rela- 
tions between  practical  reason  and  pure  reason. 
For  Plato,  practical  reason  is  a  special  form  de- 
rived from  theoretical  reason.  For  Aristotle, 
theoretical  reason  and  practical  reason  are  in- 
dependent, but  theoretical  reason  is  superior  to 
practical  reason.  For  Kant,  theoretical  reason 
and  practical  reason  are  independent,  but  prac- 
tical reason  is  superior  to  theoretical  reason. 
Schiller  goes  further  still,  and  on  the  basis  of 
the  theories  of  pragmatism  (Pierce,  James)  he 
affirms  outright  that  theoretical  reason  is  a  special 
case  and  a  derivative  form  of  practical  reason. 
Knowledge  is  merely  a  form  of  action. 

In  fact,  pure  intelligence,  that  is,  passive  intel- 
ligence, does  not  exist  for  Schiller.  We  know 
only  what  we  seek  to  know,  what  we  have  some 
interest  in  knowing.  Knowledge  is  shot  through 
with  affections,  emotions,  purposes.  One  of  the 
most  imperious  needs  of  the  human  mind  is  the 
need  of  harmony.  We  desire  that  the  data  of 
knowledge  should  agree  with  each  other  and  with 
outer  objects,  and  that  the  data  of  our  own 
knowledge  should  be  in  agreement  with  those  of 
the  human  group  in  which  we  live. 

When  an  idea  which  offers  interest  and  utility, 

^Humanism:  Philosophical  Essays,  London,  1903,  pp.  18-43, 


F.  C.  S.  SCHILLER  85 

and  does  not  clash  with  our  convictions,  comes 
before  us,  we  desire  it  to  he  true;  that  is,  we 
suppose  that  it  is  true,  and  we  act  as  if  it  were 
true,  considering  it  as  true  provisionally,  and 
awaiting  the  consequences.  If  those  consequences 
are  favorable,  and  if  the  idea  does  not  prove  to 
be  in  opposition  with  the  ideas  we  already  pos- 
sess and  with  those  of  other  men,  we  admit  it 
into  the  society  of  our  established  truths,  and  re- 
tain it  until  some  change  of  interests  or  some 
alteration  of  conditions  ousts  it  in  favor  of  some 
other  fresher  and  more  useful  truth.  Schiller, 
then,  defines  truth  as  "that  manipulation  of  data 
which  turns  out  upon  trial  to  be  useful,  primarily 
for  any  human  end,  but  ultimately  for  that  per- 
fect harmony  of  our  whole  life  which  forms  our 
final  aspiration." 

That  which  is  true  is  useful.  There  may  be 
ideas  which  are  at  the  same  time  false  and  use- 
ful, but  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  idea  which 
is  at  the  same  time  useless  and  true.  Every 
hypothesis  which  is  without  utility  is  either  false 
or  insignificant.  To  adopt  the  Platonic  termi- 
nology, the  True  is  a  form  of  the  Good,  and 
"every  act  of  human  Iniowledge  is  potentially  a 
moral  act." 

Thus  it  is  evident  that  Schiller  does  not  con- 
sider truth  as  a  thing  fixed  and  dead,  but  as  a 
thing  changeable,  plastic,  dynamic.  Truths  are 
born  and  die,  decay  and  are  renewed  continually. 


86     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

As  times  and  individuals  and  purposes  change, 
that  which  has  been  true  becomes  insignificant, 
that  which  has  seemed  absurd  comes  to  be  true. 
JNIovement  and  evolution  enter  the  calm  archi- 
tectonic world  of  knowledge.  Schiller  naturally 
regards  the  doctrines  of  evolution  with  approval, 
since  they  have  made  familiar  the  idea  of  the 
plasticity  of  organic  beings,  and  have  thus  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  idea  of  the  plasticity  of 
speculative  organisms. 

For  Schiller,  and  for  Schiller  distinctively, 
motion,  change,  and  activity  are  everything. 
Things  exist  in  so  far  as  they  are  active.  Ex- 
istence means  action.  Substance  is  activity. 
Schiller  renews  Aristotle's  vision  of  hepyeia, 
and  shares  the  vision  of  his  contemporary,  Ost- 
wald,  the  present  champion  of  energism.  Spirit 
as  well  as  substance,  then,  must  be  preeminently 
active,  must  choose  and  reconstruct.  The  world 
as  we  know  it  is  not  the  original  world:  it  is 
the  result  of  long  centuries  of  choices,  modifica- 
tions, eliminations,  deformations,  and  creations 
wi'ought  by  men  according  to  their  habits  and 
their  desires.  The  world  is  not  "a  datum  im- 
posed upon  us  ready-made,  but  the  fruit  of  a 
long  evolution,  of  a  strenuous  struggle" — the 
struggle  of  consciousness  with  consciousness,  of 
spirit  with  things,  of  man  with  the  world. 

Such  is  the  philosophy  which  comes  to  us  from 
Oxford  under  the  fair  name  of  Humanism,  dear 


F.  C.  S.  SCHILLER  87 

to  our  Latin  memories.  Italian  humanism  was 
the  resurrection  of  a  distant  and  unfamiliar 
world;  Anglo-Saxon  humanism  is  the  announce- 
ment of  a  new  world,  still  unfamiliar,  but  no 
longer  distant:  a  world  in  which  the  soul  is  mas- 
ter. And  this  explains  Schiller's  interest  in 
psychic  problems  and  his  membership  in  the 
Society  of  Psychical  Research,  which  has  made 
him  a  member  of  its  council.^  It  explains  also 
why  he  is  one  of  the  most  prominent  exponents 
of  pragmatism  as  embodied  in  James'  doctrine 
of  the  Will  to  Believe,  which  is  simply  one  of  the 
means  of  rendering  true  the  beliefs  that  most  con- 
cern us. 

Schiller's  philosophy  is  by  no  means  new.  Be- 
yond his  direct  sources — the  most  important  of 
whom  is  certainly  William  James,  the  full  ex- 
tent of  whose  influence  on  contemporary  thought 
cannot  yet  be  fully  estimated — one  may  rightly 
enough  go  back  to  the  famous  aphorism  of 
Protagoras  ("Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things") 
which  so  scandalized  the  ingenuous  soul  of  Plato. 
Saint-Martin,  the  pJiilosophe  inconnu,  set  this 
phrase  at  the  head  of  one  of  his  works:  "II  ne 
faut  pas  expliquer  I'homme  avec  les  choses  mais 
expliquer  les  choses  avec  I'homme."  Schiller 
might  have  chosen  a  still  more  daring  motto:  "II 
ne  faut  pas  soumettre  I'homme  aux  choses,  mais 

*  See  his  article  on  Human  Sentiment  a^  to  a  Future  Life,  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  XVIII  (Octo- 
ber, 1904),  416-50. 


88     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

il  faut  que  les  choses  soient  soumises  a  rhomme.'* 
The  phrase  of  Saint-Martin  may  seem  like  a 
return  to  primitive  animism,  and  the  phrase  that 
might  be  Schiller's  may  seem  like  a  return  to  bar- 
barian magic;  but  they  may  both  be  in  reality 
the  mottoes  of  a  new  spiritual  age,  an  age  to  be 
marked  by  events  no  less  important  than  the  dis- 
covery of  America  or  the  invention  of  the  steam 
engine. 

If  this  is  to  come  about,  we  must  discard  the 
metaphysical  lore  that  has  long  since  given  all 
it  had  to  give,  and  we  must  bring  forth  from 
our  own  spirits  not  only  imaginative  systems 
wherein  curiosity  may  wander  at  will,  but  that 
art  of  creation  which  is  already  foretokened  and 
is  already  in  preparation. 


VIII 
HEGEL ^ 

When  one  reads  Croce's  latest  book — as  in- 
deed when  one  reads  any  book  by  Hegel  or  by 
a  Hegelian — one  is  confronted  with  a  problem 
which  is  not  so  much  philosophical  as  psycho- 
logical. How  can  it  be  that  men  whom  I  must 
recognize  on  other  grounds  as  being  intelligent, 
even  as  being  men  of  genius,  seem  to  have  no 
difficulty  in  understanding  certain  statements 
which  to  other  persons  who  are  intelligent,  and 
are  even  men  of  genius,  appear  to  be  absolutely 
devoid  of  sense? 

Consider  the  case  which  naturally  comes  at  this 
moment  to  my  mind. 

Benedetto  Croce  is  a  man  of  great  genius,  and 
of  vast  and  well  assimilated  culture.  One  reads 
his  books  rapidly,  with  pleasure,  with  deep  in- 
terest, even  when  they  treat  of  the  loftiest  and 
most  difficult  questions  that  human  thought  can 
set  before  itself.  His  critical  essays  are  delight- 
ful: witty,  frank,  and  erudite.    Many  of  his  in- 

^  Written  a  propos  of  Benedetto  Croce's  Cid  ch'  k  vivo  e  cib  ch'  d 
morto  nella   filosofia   di  Hepel    ("What   is   Living   and   What   is 
Dead  of  the  Philosophy  of  Hegel"),  Bari,  1906. 
89 


90     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

cidental  remarks  and  some  of  his  theories  compel 
us  to  recognize  in  him  one  of  the  broadest  and 
most  penetrating  of  recent  Italian  thinkers. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
people  pay  heed  to  what  I  write,  I  cannot  deny 
that  I  am  myself  an  intelligent  man.  And  if  I 
cannot  go  so  far  as  to  say  as  much  of  myself 
as  I  have  said  of  Croce,  the  fact  remains  that 
Croce,  both  in  public  and  in  private,  has  ex- 
pressed opinions  of  my  work  which  do  me  much 
honor,  and  that  in  the  Leonardo  some  time  ago 
he  referred  to  me  as  "a  keen  mind,  quick  to  per- 
ceive the  essential  point  of  a  problem." 

How  then  can  you  explain  the  fact  that  when 
I  read  and  reread  Croce's  book  on  the  persistent 
and  the  transitory  elements  in  the  philosophy  of 
Hegel,  I  constantly  come  across  phrases  the  sig- 
nificance of  which  appears  to  be  perfectly  and 
immediately  clear  to  Croce,  while  I  on  the  con- 
trary receive  from  them  merely  the  impression 
of  more  or  less  elegant  and  symmetrical  combina- 
tions of  words  which  might  have  a  certain  sense 
if  they  were  taken  singly,  but  lose  that  sense 
completely  when  they  are  put  together  in  just 
this  way? 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  answer  that  Hegehans 
give  to  those  who  criticize  their  books  on  this 
score:  to  understand  Hegel,  they  say,  you  must 
read  him  and  then  reread  him  and  then  meditate 
on  him  and  then  consider  him  in  relation  with 


HEGEL  91 

all  his  predecessors  and  then  consider  him  in 
relation  with  all  his  followers — in  short,  that  you 
must  steep  yourself  in  that  atmosphere  of  ideal- 
istic culture  in  which  the  Hegelian  philosophy 
was  formed  and  developed. 

But  in  the  case  of  Croce's  book  this  reply  is 
not  in  point,  for  this  book  cannot  demand  on  the 
part  of  its  critics  any  such  preparation — a  prepa- 
ration which,  in  the  last  analysis,  would  immo- 
bilize the  critic  for  so  long  a  period  that  at  its 
close  he  would  have  to  admit — either  in  order 
to  avoid  confessing  that  he  had  wasted  his  time 
or  as  a  result  of  slow  intoxication  or  auto-sugges- 
tion— that  Hegel  was  a  great  man  and  that  his 
philosophy,  though  perhaps  in  need  of  still 
further  development,  will  remain  the  best  of  all 
possible  philosophies.  For  Croce's  book  is  in- 
tended to  serve  as  an  introduction  to  the  Hegelian 
system,  as  the  indispensable  means  by  which  one 
may  prepare  himself  to  read  Croce's  translations 
of  the  works  of  Hegel.  In  other  words,  his  book 
must  stand  or  fall  on  its  own  merits;  and  if  it 
is  to  attain  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  written, 
it  must  be  intelligible  even  to  one  who  has  not 
seen  the  title-pages  of  the  Phenomenology  of  the 
Sjjirit  and  the  Logic. 

I  know  that  Croce  and  his  parrots  are  fond  of 
saying  that  men  who  do  not  or  will  not  read 
Hegel  are  intellectually  lazy.  The  accusation 
would  be  in  point  if  the  men  in  question,  while 


92     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

not  studying  Hegel,  did  not  study  any  one  else 
either.  But  Croce  knows  that  the  men  in  ques- 
tion spend  the  time  saved  by  neglecting  the  En- 
cyclopedia of  Philosophic  Science  not  at  the  bil- 
liard table,  but  in  reading  and  in  studying  other 
books  which  may  be  as  difficult  and  exhausting 
as  those  of  Hegel — and  more  fruitful. 

Indeed,  we  may  well  apply  to  philosophers 
what  Jesus  said  of  trees:  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them."  There  are  men  who  have  spent  a 
great  part  of  their  lives  in  the  endeavor  to  read 
and  understand  Hegel.  And  if  the  writings  of 
these  men  appear,  as  they  usually  do  appear,  to 
be  pedantic,  obscure,  and  meaningless,  then  I 
have  reason  to  suspect  that  the  reading  of  Hegel 
is  no  such  elixir  of  philosophic  life  as  it  is  claimed 
to  be,  and  I  may  well  prefer  to  study  the  malady 
in  others  rather  than  to  expose  myself  to  the  in- 
fection. 

William  James  compared  Hegehanism  to  a 
mouse-trap.  It  reminds  me  rather  of  the  fable 
of  the  sick  lion  who  could  not  leave  his  tent 
to  hunt  other  beasts,  and  had  therefore  com- 
missioned the  fox  to  bring  the  other  beasts  to 
see  him,  so  that  he  might  devour  them  at  his  con- 
venience. The  gracious  invitation  was  given  to 
the  ass,  among  others;  but  when  that  wise  crea- 
ture came  to  the  threshold  of  the  lion's  den  he 
observed  that  the  ground  bore  many  prints  of 
feet  that  had  entered  in,  but  none  of  feet  that 


HEGEL  93 

had  come  out — and  he  turned  back.  The  ass  was 
always -a  philosophic  beast:  witness  Buridan  and 
Bruno! 

Croce's  book  makes  it  unnecessary  for  us — 
for  the  moment  at  least — to  enter  the  trap,  or 
the  den,  since  it  is  supposed,  as  I  have  said,  to 
be  intelligible  without  previous  reading  of  Hegel, 
and  since  it  is  at  the  same  time  a  select  sample 
of  the  products  of  the  Neapolitan  branch  of 
Hegel  &  Co. 

Let  us  see,  then,  what  there  is  that  we  may 
regard  as  significant  and  as  valid  in  those  ele- 
ments of  Hegel's  philosophy  which,  according 
to  Croce,  still  persist.  Some  time  ago,  in  an  ar- 
ticle in  the  Critica  entitled  Are  We  Hegelians? 
Croce  besought  for  his  favorite  philosopher  at 
least  a  definitive  burial,  a  first-class  funeral.  For 
my  part,  I  am  quite  willing  to  drive  a  few  more 
nails  into  the  coffin. 


The  two  great  merits  of  Hegel,  according  to 
his  latest  champion,  are  these:  that  he  demon- 
strated the  existence  of  a  method  peculiar  to 
philosophy  and  different  from  the  methods  of 
art  or  the  physical  and  mathematical  sciences; 
and  that  he  formulated  that  dialectic  (the  co- 
existence of  contraries  or  the  identity  of  oppo- 
sites)  which  was  already  imj^licit  in  certain  ear- 


94     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

lier  philosophers,  and  was  mdeed  foretokened 
in  a  general  way  by  the  whole  course  of  phi- 
losophy. 

Philosophy,  then,  differs  from  all  other  prod- 
ucts of  the  human  mind  in  that  it  concerns 
itself  with  concepts  which  are  universal  and  con- 
crete, unlike  the  intuitions  of  art,  the  ecstasies 
of  mysticism,  or  the  representative  generalities 
of  science. 

Certain  objections  are,  however,  to  be  brought 
against  Croce's  thesis  that  philosophy  must  per- 
force have  a  method  of  its  own  since  the  other  ac- 
tivities of  the  human  spirit  (mathematics,  natural 
science,  history,  art,  economics,  ethics)  have  each 
its  own  method.  In  the  first  place,  the  methods 
of  the  several  other  activities  which  he  enumerates 
are  not  entirely  distinct,  since  mathematical 
methods  are  employed  in  natural  science,  artistic 
methods  in  history,  naturalistic  or  mathematical 
methods  in  economics,  and  so  on.  Clearly,  then, 
it  is  by  no  means  true  that  each  particular  disci- 
pline has  always  its  own  specific  method. 

Furthermore,  Croce  does  not  discuss,  and  ap- 
parently has  not  even  considered,  a  hypothesis 
which  is  perfectly  possible  and  in  my  opinion 
altogether  probable :  the  hypothesis  that  philoso- 
phy may  fairly  be  considered  as  consisting  of 
those  problems  which  concern  several  sciences 
at  the  same  time,  which  are,  as  it  were,  cross- 
roads or  neutral  zones  of  two  or  three  or  more 


HEGEL  95 

sciences — in  which  case  philosophy  might  well 
be  content  with  the  methods  employed  in  mathe- 
matics and  in  the  natural  sciences. 

But  I  prefer  to  turn  to  the  question  whether 
the  method  which  Hegel  and  Croce  attribute  to 
philosophy  has  any  real  value  in  itself,  and 
whether,  if  so,  it  is  really  unlike  the  other 
methods. 

We  must  try,  then,  to  understand  this  "philo- 
sophic thinking"  which  is  different  from  all  other 
activities  of  the  mind,  and  which  is  one  of  those 
things  against  which — so  Croce  writes — "rebel- 
lion seems  to  me  impossible,  though  I  recognize 
that  they  should  be  taught  more  and  more  widely, 
since  they  constitute,  as  it  were,  the  neglected 
a  b  c  oi  philosophy."  But  this  a  &  c  is  by  no 
means  easy  to  understand,  even  when  one  brings 
to  the  task,  as  I  have  done,  the  utmost  resolution 
and  good  will. 

When  I  am  told  that  philosophy  is  concerned 
with  concepts,  that  is  to  say,  with  abstract  no- 
tions and  not  with  particular  representations  or 
personal  sentiments,  I  can  understand  perfectly 
well ;  but  when  I  am  told  that  these  concepts  are 
not  general  concepts  like  those  of  science,  but 
universal  concepts,  then  I  am  lost.  For  if  the 
term  "universal  concept"  does  not  indicate,  just 
as  the  term  "general  concept"  does,  certain  quaU- 
ties  common  to  a  definite  and  limited  class  of 
objects,  what  then  can  it  indicate?      The  most 


96     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

probable  explanation,  to  my  mind,  is  that  Croce 
gives  the  name  "universal"  to  a  certain  number 
of  general  concepts  which  are  distinguished  from 
the  concepts  of  the  experimental  sciences  merely 
in  that  they  have  frequently  been  the  object  of 
study  of  certain  men  called  philosophers.  In  this 
case  the  distinction  would  be  merely  apparent, 
or  rather,  would  be  historical  rather  than  logical. 
But  Croce  certainly  would  not  admit  this  inter- 
pretation, which,  I  must  confess,  reveals  a  lack 
of  confidence  in  his  analytical  ability.  I  am  com- 
pelled, therefore,  to  seek  for  some  interpretation 
which  might  justify,  at  least  to  Croce's  eyes,  the 
establishment  of  a  distinction  between  general 
concepts  and  universal  concepts. 

Croce's  method,  as  all  who  have  read  his  books 
are  well  aware,  is  primarily  a  process  of  elimina- 
tion. He  is  careful  to  tell  us  that  x  is  neither  a 
nor  h  nor  c,  but  he  does  not  take  the  trouble  to 
tell  us  what  x  really  is.  In  the  case  in  question 
he  asserts  that  the  universal  concept  is  not  the 
general  concept — that  is  all.  Since  he  does  not 
even  go  on  to  say  what  a  general  concept  is,  we 
are  justified  in  assuming  that  he  is  using  the 
term  "general  concept"  in  its  ordinary  sense,  that 
is,  as  a  term  indicating  one  or  more  character- 
istics common  to  a  certain  class  of  objects. 

Now  since  Croce  is  endeavoring  to  establish  a 
contrast  between  the  universal  concept  and  the 
general  concept,   the   question   naturally  arises 


HEGEL  97 

whether  the  term  "universal  concept"  is  intended 
to  indicate  one  or  more  characteristics  common 
to  all  objects.  Croce  does  not  explicitly  state 
that  this  is  his  meaning;  but  this  appears  never- 
theless to  be  the  only  interpretation  that  could 
justify  the  distinction. 

But  are  there  really  characteristics  common 
to  all  objects?  There  would  seem  to  be  two,  and 
only  two:  first,  the  fact  that  these  objects  are 
known  by  us;  second,  the  fact  that  these  objects 
differ  from  each  other.  But  these  two  character- 
istics may  evidently  be  reduced  to  one  single 
characteristic,  namely,  the  fact  of  "being."  For 
we  predicate  being  of  those  things  which  we 
know,  directly  or  indirectly ;  and  we  know  things 
only  in  so  far  as  they  differ  from  each  other,  since 
complete  and  homogeneous  unity  would  be  tanta- 
mount to  unknowability — that  is,  so  far  as  we 
are  concerned,  to  non-existence,  or  "not-being." 

The  diversity  of  objects  and  their  resultant 
knowabihty  mean  then  only  this:  that  the  ob- 
jects exist.  "Being"  would  then  seem  to  be  the 
only  "universal  concept"  in  the  supposedly 
Crocean  sense.  And  its  very  uniqueness  deprives 
it  of  real  value :  for  a  concept  has  meaning  only 
in  so  far  as  it  may  be  distinguished  from  other 
concepts,  whereas  in  this  case  we  cannot  conceive 
of  anything  which,  through  the  very  fact  of  be- 
ing conceived,  is  non-existent.  "Not-being"  is 
unthinkable,  and  cannot  serve  therefore  to  help 


98     FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

us  to  understand  "being" — which  is  itself  un- 
thinkable, since  there  is  nothing  with  which  we 
can  contrast  it. 

Now  Hegel,  according  to  Croce,  admits  that 
the  concepts  of  "being"  and  "not-being"  have  no 
meaning  if  taken  separately,  and  asserts  that 
they  acquire  significance  when  they  are  united  in 
the  concept  of  "becoming."  But  even  when  the 
two  concepts  are  brought  together  they  do  not 
succeed  in  throwing  light  on  each  other,  since  a 
condition  precedent  to  their  having  a  joint  mean- 
ing would  be  the  previous  and  independent  pos- 
session of  meaning  by  one  or  the  other.  The 
blind  cannot  lead  the  blind. 

Even  the  concept  of  "becoming,"  the  delight  of 
the  Hegelians,  the  reflector  (to  their  minds) 
which  illumines  those  two  poor  concepts  of  "be- 
ing" and  "not-being"  which  remain  obscure  until 
they  are  transcended — even  the  concept  of  "be- 
coming" appears  on  careful  examination  to  be 
merely  a  disguise  for  the  concept  of  "being." 
"Becoming"  implies  motion,  change,  diversity  in 
time.  To  say  that  the  world  becomes  amounts 
to  saying  that  changes  take  place  in  the  world 
(regularly  or  sporadically),  and  that  in  conse- 
quence things  which  had  certain  characteristics 
at  a  certain  moment  have  different  characteristics 
at  a  later  moment.  We  are  therefore  dealing 
with  diversity — ^that  is  to  say,  with  the  funda- 


HEGEL  99 

mental  condition  of  knowability,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  nothing  other  than  "being." 

Nor  does  the  idea  of  "not-being"  help  us  out, 
for  in  all  changes  nothing  is  really  lost.  We  sim- 
ply have  different  impressions,  one  after  the 
other.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  some- 
thing has  been  annihilated  merely  because  my 
sensations  change  from  moment  to  moment  while 
my  attention  is  fixed  on  a  given  point  in  space, 
any  more  than  there  is  reason  to  think  that 
something  has  been  annihilated  merely  because 
I  receive  different  impressions  from  moment  to 
moment  when  looking  through  a  window  of  a 
moving  train. 

The  only  difference  is  that  in  the  case  of  con- 
cepts we  may  turn  back  and  see  again  just  what 
we  saw  before — which  we  cannot  do  in  the  case 
of  time.  But  the  fact  that  you  can't  buy  return 
tickets  in  time  is  no  reason  for  believing  that  an- 
nihilation has  taken  place.  Chemistry,  more- 
over, offers  us  plenty  of  cases  in  which  the  union 
of  elements  produces  a  substance  which  differs 
from  any  one  of  the  component  elements,  and 
will  yield  those  elements  again  through  analysis. 

The  concept  of  "becoming"  is  then  an  element 
of  the  concept  of  "being,"  and  is  not  something 
which  transcends  that  concept  by  uniting  to  it 
the  concept  of  "not-being."  And  if,  as  I  believe, 
the  concept  of  "being"  is  the  only  "universal" 
concept,  then  philosophy  is  in  a  sorry  plight  in- 


100  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

deed,  since  it  has  as  the  field  of  its  labors  just 
one  concept.  A  single  concept  would  not  in  any 
case  suffice  for  the  building  of  a  system — and 
this  particular  concept  is  meaningless. 

For  Hegel  himself,  after  saying  that  the  con- 
cept must  be  universal,  proceeds,  even  when  he 
claims  to  be  writing  philosophy,  to  deal  with  con- 
cepts which  are  not  in  the  least  universal.  In 
the  Logic,  for  instance,  he  speaks  of  quahty, 
measure,  force,  and  matter — of  concepts,  that 
is,  which  evidently  are  not  universal  concepts, 
since  according  to  Hegel  himself  they  do  not 
concern  all  reality  or  any  characteristic  of  all 
reality.  Even  philosophers,  then,  must  have  re- 
course to  the  "general"  concepts  that  obtain  in 
the  experimental  sciences. 

And  Croce  himself,  when  he  draws  up  a  list 
of  opposites,  is  compelled  to  cite  the  "good"  and 
the  "evil,"  the  "true"  and  the  "false,"  the  "beau- 
tiful" and  the  "ugly,"  which  are  certainly  not 
universal  concepts,  since  not  all  things  are  beau- 
tiful, nor  are  all  affirmations  false,  nor  all  actions 
good.  Philosophers  then,  even  when  they  have 
had  the  privilege  of  reading  Hegel,  use  either 
words  which  are  devoid  of  sense,  or  concepts  as 
general  as  those  of  the  poor  everyday  scientist. 

But  the  philosophic  concept,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  to  be  distinguished  from  the  pseudo-concepts 
of  science  not  only  by  its  universality,  but  also 
by  its  concreteness.     It  i«  concrete:  that  is  to 


HEGEL  101 

say,  "it  does  not  consist  of  arbitrary  abstractions: 
it  is  not  a  petrifaction  of  reality,  but  a  summary 
of  reality  in  all  its  richness  and  fullness.  Philo- 
sophical abstractions  are  necessary,  and  are 
therefore  adequate  to  reality,  and  do  not  mutilate 
or  falsify  it." 

But  in  this  case  the  word  concrete  is  evidently 
to  be  taken  in  some  sense  other  than  the  ordinary 
sense,  and  cannot  mean  "something  tangible  and 
existent,"  for  if  it  did,  then  the  individual  sciences 
would  also  be  concrete.  It  must  then  indicate 
something  complete  and  adequate  to  reality. 
Scientific  concepts  impoverish  reality,  and  the 
philosopher,  it  would  seem,  represents  reality 
entire. 

Supposing  that  he  does,  how  does  he  do  it? 
By  means  of  words  so  general  and  so  vague  ("be- 
coming," for  example)  that  whatsoever  occurs 
and  whatsoever  exists  is  of  necessity  comprised 
therein.  If  to  be  complete  is  to  find  words  which 
have  so  vast  an  extension  as  to  comprise  every- 
thing, then  the  most  complete  description  of  the 
world  would  be:  "Things  exist."  Such  a  formula 
omits  nothing — but  at  the  same  time  it  tells  us 
nothing.  A  reporter  describing  a  crowd  at  the 
races  cites  the  names  of  only  a  few  of  those  pres- 
ent, and  thereby  impoverishes  reality.  If  a  phi- 
losopher referring  to  the  same  scene  should  state 
that  at  a  given  point  there  were  a  certain  num- 
ber of  men  and  women,  his  statement  would  be 


10^  FOUIi  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

more  complete,  but  at  the  same  time  more  in- 
definite. The  highest  completeness  is  then  equal 
to  the  highest  indefiniteness.  And  we  naturally 
prefer  to  be  told  a  few  specific  facts  rather  than 
listen  to  a  man  who  pretends  to  tell  us  everything, 
but  gives  us  no  information.  Completeness  may 
be  achieved  with  a  single  word,  but  where  then 
is  the  richness  and  the  fullness  we  were  promised? 

Nor  can  I  make  out  what  Croce  means  by  in- 
dicating that  the  philosophic  concept  is  adequate 
to  reality.  Certainly  not  that  it  is  identical  with 
or  similar  to  the  reahty  with  which  it  deals,  for 
a  book  on  botany  is  not  a  forest,  and  a  book  on 
philosophy  is  not  the  world.  Perhaps  then 
knowledge  "adequate  to  reality"  is  such  knowl- 
edge as  will  enable  me  to  recognize  things  of 
which  I  have  been  told,  to  foresee  them  and  thus 
to  control  them. 

Upon  this  basis  chemistry  may  fairly  be  called 
a  science  adequate  to  reality.  For  if  I  read  a 
description  of  platinum,  and  thereafter  find  my- 
self in  possession  of  a  piece  of  platinum,  I  am 
able  to  determine  that  it  is  platinum;  and  I 
know  that  if  I  fuse  a  certain  quantity  of  chloride 
with  a  certain  quantity  of  mercury,  I  shall  obtain 
another  substance  which  will  have  characteristics 
more  or  less  similar  to  those  of  chloride  and  mer- 
cury, and  may  serve  for  certain  definite  purposes. 

In  philosophy,  however,  we  find  no  such  con- 
ditions.    No  one  has  ever  met  a  concept  on  the 


HEGEL  103 

street — though  Hegel  says  that  ideas  have  legs. 
A  concept  must  be  derived,  by  thought,  from  a 
particular  object,  or  particular  objects;  and  it 
has  often  happened,  as  the  whole  history  of  sci- 
ence and  philosophy  bears  witness,  that  a  single 
object  has  given  rise  to  very  different  concepts. 
Furthermore,  the  concepts  of  philosophy  do  not 
even  enable  us  to  foresee.  If  I  should  be  con- 
verted tomorrow  to  Hegelianism,  none  of  my  an- 
ticipations would  be  changed;  I  should  merely 
experience  certain  intellectual  emotions  somewhat 
different  in  character  from  those  I  now  experi- 
ence. It  has  been  said  many  a  time  that  the 
rabid  Berkeleyite,  even  though  he  believes  that 
the  world  is  composed  exclusively  of  spiritual 
phenomena,  is  just  as  careful  as  any  materialist 
to  avoid  running  into  a  wall. 

This  first  analysis,  then,  has  served  to  show 
that  the  "philosophic  concept"  is  either  unthink- 
able or  is  a  general  concept  like  the  rest ;  that  it  is 
complete  only  by  virtue  of  giving  no  informa- 
tion; and  that  it  is  in  no  sense  adequate  to 
reality. 

There  remains  the  famous  dialectic  of  Hegel 
— but  to  this  I  shall  return  later  on,  attempting 
to  give  it  a  sense  which  is  certainly  not  that  de- 
sired by  Hegel  nor  that  intended  by  Croce.  For 
the  moment  I  wish  to  turn  to  the  problem  which 
I  suggested  at  the  start.  We  have  seen  that 
Hegelianism  has  no  comprehensible  intellectual 


104  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

content :  what  then  is  its  emotional  content,  what 
is  its  moral  significance? 


II 


The  phenomenon  of  Hegelianism  will  consti- 
tute one  of  the  most  important  problems  in  that 
study  of  the  comparative  psychology  of  philoso- 
phers which  some  one  will  eventually  initiate. 

What  are  the  states  of  consciousness  of  those 
who  read  or  write  Hegelian  phrases  ?  What  are 
the  sentiments  or  the  needs  which  have  caused 
the  rise  and  development  of  philosophies  of  the 
Hegelian  type?  For  it  does  not  suffice  to  say 
that  the  books  of  Hegel  and  his  disciples  are  for 
the  most  part  composed  of  meaningless  phrases 
which  many  persons,  through  habit,  through  imi- 
tation, or  through  lack  of  analytical  ability,  think 
that  they  comprehend.  If,  as  I  believe,  those 
phrases  have  no  valid  theoretical  significance, 
they  must  have  an  emotional  or  an  aesthetic 
or  a  moral  significance,  and  it  must  be  possible 
to  determine  and  describe  this  significance  at 
least  approximately. 

Among  the  non-philosophic  elements  which  en- 
ter into  Hegelian  philosophy,  the  sesthetic  ele- 
ment certainly  holds  the  first  place.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  there  is  a  i'hetoric  of  conceits  as  well 
as  a  rhetoric  of  imagery,  and  that  philosophy,  like 


HEGEL  105 

poetry,  has  its  preciosite  and  its  Symbolism. 
Just  as  there  are  orators  who  attain  astonishing 
popularity  by  dint  of  putting  together  bombastic 
and  resonant  phrases  in  which  heterogeneous 
words — mingled  more  or  less  at  random  and 
strained  beyond  their  ordinary  meaning — serve 
to  lead  up  to  impressive  moral  or  patriotic  or  hu- 
manitarian tirades,  so  there  are  philosophers  who 
win  an  extraordinary  degree  of  influence  in  cer- 
tain minds  by  mixing  together  great  words  of 
uncertain  significance  and  mysterious  color,  ar- 
ranging them  in  symmetrical  schemes  and  in  ele- 
gant combinations,  and  making  reversible  cha- 
rades or  impressive  phrases  broken  here  and  there 
by  a  noisy  outburst  of  metaphysics.  When  you 
read  that  a  syllogism  is  "the  essence  of  logic 
meeting  with  itself,"  that  the  "negative  is  also 
positive,  positive  in  the  very  fact  of  its  being 
negative,"  that  "the  unreal  has  its  own  reality, 
which  is  to  be  sure  the  reality  of  the  unreal:  the 
reality  of  'not-being'  in  the  dialectic  triad,  of  that 
'not-being'  which  is  not  real,  but  is  the  stimulus 
of  the  real,"  you  experience  an  aesthetic  pleasure 
which  is  different  from  that  of  poetry,  but  is 
none  the  less  unmistakable,  though  it  has  as  yet 
no  name.  A  similar  pleasure  is  to  be  derived 
from  the  unexpected  and  sometimes  grotesque 
comparisons  of  the  Hegelians,  which  recall  the 
famous  metaphors  of  the  decadent  lyrists  of  the 
seventeenth  century.     A  similar  pleasure  comes 


106  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

also  from  the  sort  of  musical  and  suggestive 
rhythm  which  appears  in  certain  pretentious  and 
meaningless  phrases.  There  are  pages  of  Hegel 
which  have  in  the  field  of  thought  the  same  ef- 
fect that  the  sonnets  of  Mallarme  have  in  the 
field  of  poetry.  They  are  instruments  of  evoca- 
tion and  of  indefinite,  sentimental  suggestiveness 
— and  they  are  nothing  more.  That  does  not 
lessen  their  value;  it  may  even  increase  it.  But 
verbal  narcotics  and  hyj^notic  formulas  are  not  to 
be  imposed  on  us  as  truths. 

The  sentimental  states  most  readily  produced 
by  the  books  of  Hegel  are  pride,  mystic  ecstasy, 
and  the  sense  of  motion.  The  sense  of  motion 
certainly  pervades  Hegelian  philosophy,  and 
despite  deficiencies  in  logical  expression  has  cer- 
tainly contributed  to  its  popularity.  The  think- 
ers of  Hegel's  day  were  a  little  weary  of  static 
systems,  of  fixed  and  motionless  metaphysics, 
of  the  cold  classifications  and  distinctions  of  tra- 
ditional philosophy,  and  they  felt  the  need  of  a 
start,  a  run,  a  crack  of  the  whip.  The  philosophy 
of  Hegel,  even  in  the  manner  of  its  utterance, 
brought  this  sense  of  motion,  of  change,  of  de- 
velopment. The  Hegelian  world  is  rather  a 
promenade  for  the  Idea  than  a  stationary  piece 
of  furniture  full  of  drawers  and  pigeonholes. 

Men  were  beginning  just  then  to  acquire  that 
love  of  motion  and  speed  which  has  today  reached 
the  point  of  frenzy ;  and  we  have  Hegel  to  thank 


HEGEL  107 

for  starting  the  reaction  against  the  immobihty 
of  the  old  regime  in  philosophy,  just  as  Darwin 
started  it,  a  little  later,  in  biology. 

But  Hegelianism  is  not  to  be  wholly  accounted 
for  by  the  satisfaction  which  it  gives  to  such 
sentiments.  Its  success  has  been  due  to  other 
causes  as  well,  and  in  particular  to  moral  causes. 
It  satisfies  the  need  which  men  have  always  felt 
for  the  creation  of  a  world  sui  gcnens,  located 
beyond  and  above  the  world  of  sense  and  of  sci- 
ence, exempt  by  its  very  nature  from  the  attacks 
of  criticism  and  the  denials  of  experience,  a  world 
wherein  one  may  give  free  play  to  beliefs  and  sen- 
timents of  every  sort.  These  metaphysical 
w^orlds  of  the  philosophers  have  in  the  city  of 
thought  the  same  function  that  cathedrals  had 
in  the  Middle  Ages:  they  enjoy  the  right  of  asy- 
lum. For  when  a  man  who  has  sinned  in  the  pres- 
ence of  science  or  experience  takes  refuge  in  such 
a  world,  its  prelates  cover  him  with  the  mantle 
of  philosophy,  and  save  not  only  his  life,  but  his 
reputation. 


Ill 


In  speaking  thus  of  the  philosophic  concept — 
the  Isis,  the  Phoenix,  and  the  Veiled  Prophet 
of  Hegelianism — I  have  by  implication  criticized 
the  Hegelian  dialectic  as  well,  since  this  dialectic 
feeds  only  on  these  particular  concepts.    But  the 


108   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

dialectic  may  also  be  attacked  directly,  and  with- 
out recourse  to  the  notion  of  the  inconceivable. 

The  worst  absurdity  that  lurks  in  the  dialectic 
seems  to  be  this:  while  the  Hegelians  boast  that 
by  means  of  their  dialectic  they  can  transcend 
antitheses  and  can  thus  attain  the  unity  and 
homogeneity  of  the  world  (Croce  affirms  that 
Hegel  justifies  the  saying  of  Goethe  that  the 
world  is  all  of  a  piece,  without  kernel  and  with- 
out bark),  they  start  off  by  accepting  as  actual 
and  as  justified  many  of  the  very  antitheses 
which  they  seek  thereafter  to  transcend.  Now 
anyone  who  tries  to  reconcile  two  persons  bears 
witness,  by  that  very  action,  that  they  are  in 
disagreement;  while  in  the  case  of  concepts  we 
have  to  deal  not  always  with  actual  antitheses, 
but  often  with  different  expressions  of  the  same 
idea,  or  with  concepts  which  are  different  but 
not  necessarily  antithetic. 

Croce,  to  be  sure,  bases  his  criticism  of  Hegel 
upon  what  he  regards  as  Hegel's  confusion  be- 
tween the  relationship  of  antithetic  entities  and 
the  relationship  of  different  entities — for  Hegel, 
according  to  Croce,  applies  to  the  latter  relation- 
ship a  procedure  which  is  valid  only  for  the 
former.  Yet  Croce  himself  accepts  as  antithetic 
certain  concepts  which  are  merely  different 
formulations  of  one  basic  concept.  In  his  ac- 
count of  the  problem  of  antitheses  in  the  history 
of  philosoj)hy,  for  instance,  he  regards  as  an- 


HEGEL  109 

tithetic  the  materialists,  considered  as  the  repre- 
sentative monists,  and  the  spirituahsts,  considered 
as  the  representative  duahsts:  whereas  everyone 
knows  that  there  have  been  materiahsts  who 
were  also  pluralists  (some  of  the  pre-Socratics, 
for  example),  and  spiritualists  who  were  also 
monists  (Berkeley,  for  example).  The  HegeH- 
ans,  in  short,  are  too  ready  to  consider  certain 
concepts  as  antithetic,  and  then  to  make  valiant 
efforts  to  reconcile  antitheses  which  needed  only 
to  be  unmasked. 

But  disregarding  these  matters  of  method,  for 
which  the  Hegelian  mind  has  no  liking,  it  is  dif- 
ficult in  any  case  to  accept  the  Hegelian  dialectic 
as  a  metaphysical  explanation  of  the  world.  If 
Hegel  had  limited  himself  to  the  introduction 
of  the  idea  of  motion  into  our  conception  of  the 
universe,  all  would  have  been  well;  but  when  he 
attempts  to  represent  the  mar  die  des  clioses  as 
a  pursuit  of  antitheses  and  of  syntheses  which 
give  way  to  new  antitheses,  transcended  in  their 
turn  by  new  syntheses — and  so  on  in  rhythmic 
perpetuity — we  cannot  help  wondering  that  men 
of  genius,  including  Hegel  himself,  should  really 
have  believed  that  the  world  was  made  in  such 
a  fashion,  by  dint  of  the  actions  and  reactions 
of  abstract  concepts.  For  we  must  remind  our- 
selves once  in  a  while  that  the  mere  attribution 
of  the  adjective  concrete  to  an  ethereal  abstrac- 
tion and  the  mere  assertion  that  the  range  of  cer- 


110  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

tain  concepts  represents  the  whole  of  reality  do 
not  suffice  to  prove  that  one  is  actually  dealing 
with  real  and  concrete  things.  It  is  easy  enough 
to  give  a  name  to  a  thing,  but  it  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  the  thing  really  possesses  the  char- 
acteristics indicated  by  the  name.  I  may  affirm 
that  The  Tempest  is  a  historical  comedy:  but 
that  affirmation  does  not  turn  Prospero,  Ariel, 
and  Caliban  into  historical  characters.  The 
Hegelians  have  too  much  faith  in  the  magic 
power  of  the  word;  and  when  they  have  filled 
their  mouths  with  those  words  w^hich  most  readily 
inspire  the  confidence  of  the  populace  ( real,  con- 
crete, true,  etc. ) ,  they  really  think  that  they  have 
bestowed  upon  their  theories  the  qualities  which 
those  words  indicate.  In  this  respect  the  Hege- 
lians are  very  like  the  positivists.  What  a  mass 
of  absurd  theses  and  superficial  generalizations 
people  have  been  made  to  swallow  without  ques- 
tion, just  because  they  were  labeled  positive, 
scientific,  or  matJiematical! 

But  I  am  forgetting  my  purpose,  which  con- 
sists not  so  much  in  attempting  a  criticism  of  the 
Hegelian  dialectic — which  would  hardly  be  pos- 
sible save  for  those  who  are  ready  to  deal  in  ma- 
jestic and  confused  phrases  and  to  fabricate 
rebuses  of  the  same  sort — as  in  attempting  to 
discover  in  it  some  reasonable  meaning.  By  way 
of  making  amends  for  my  delay,  I  will  be  gen- 
erous: instead  of  suggesting  one  meaning  I  will 


HEGEL  111 

offer  two,  and  the  Hegelians  may  take  their 
choice. 

My  first  interpretation  is  this.  The  Hegelian 
dialectic  is  a  logical  reaction  (masked  as  a  meta- 
physical reaction)  against  the  false  distinctions 
of  scholasticism  and  of  traditional  philosophy  in 
general ;  it  is  a  paradoxical  defense  against  those 
who  have  sought  to  stop  the  course  of  thought 
by  putting  insistent  dilemmas  in  its  way.  Hege- 
lianism,  then,  in  the  presence  of  false  distinctions, 
has  sought  to  fuse  and  to  mingle  at  all  costs,  in 
such  a  way  as  to  produce  confusions  which  in 
their  turn  require  new  distinctions,  presumably 
better  than  the  old  ones.  Hegelianism  is  in  a 
certain  sense  the  declaration  of  our  right  to  dis- 
regard apparent  antinomies.  To  those  who  say 
"either  this  or  that"  Hegelianism  replies  "both 
this  and  that."  Hegel  represents  the  warfare 
of  the  and's  against  the  or's,  the  point  of  view 
of  those  who  instead  of  "cutting  off  the  bull's 
head"  prefer  simply  to  cut  off  his  horns.  There 
have  been  false  antinomies  in  all  the  sciences 
(heavy  and  light,  terrestrial  and  celestial,  for 
instance),  and  scientists  have  removed  them  one 
by  one.  Hegel,  instead  of  performing  the  same 
task  in  the  field  of  philosophy  by  a  direct  criti- 
cism of  false  philosophic  antinomies,  chose  the 
form  of  metaphysics,  and  was  led  on  by  his  en- 
thusiasm to  give  the  appearance  of  a  system  of 


112   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

reality  to  what  was  in  fact  merely  a  correction 
of  method. 

And  if  you  do  not  like  my  first  interpretation, 
here  is  my  second.  The  Hegelian  dialectic  is  a 
sort  of  historic  law,  a  theory  of  the  manner  in 
which  social  forms  or  scientific  theories  succeed 
each  other.  It  amounts  to  saying  this:  that  an 
exaggerated  assertion  is  usually  succeeded  by  an 
assertion  which  exaggerates  in  the  opposite  di- 
rection, without  regard  to  the  restrictions  which 
in  part  justify  the  original  assertion;  and  that 
these  two  contrary  assertions  then  give  place  to 
a  third,  which  takes  account  of  the  modicum  of 
truth  contained  in  each  of  the  first  two,  and  con- 
sohdates  them  by  reestablishing  the  tacit  restric- 
tions and  suppressing  the  exaggerations.  It 
amounts,  in  short,  to  saying  that  it  takes  two  op- 
posite errors  to  estabhsh  a  truth.  This  general- 
ization, which  could  be  amply  instanced,  is  of 
the  same  order  as  Comte's  law  of  the  three  states, 
and  constitutes  a  similarity  between  Hegelianism 
and  positivism.  Both  of  these  laws,  though  they 
refer  to  entirely  different  classes  of  facts,  sim- 
plify to  a  high  degree;  but  roughly,  and  within 
certain  limits,  they  do  represent  the  movement 
of  the  history  of  ideas.  They  afford  material, 
then,  rather  for  the  psychology  of  philosophers 
or  of  scientists  than  for  philosophy  itself,  as  the 
Hegelians  would  have  us  believe. 
In  short,  the  choice  lies  between  the  hypothesis 


HEGEL  113 

that  the  Hegelian  dialectic  is  a  disguised  logical 
reaction,  and  the  hypothesis  that  it  is  a  historic 
law.  In  the  first  case  Hegel  assumes  the  sem- 
blance of  a  pragmatist;  in  the  second  case  he  is 
linked  with  the  positivists.  Let  the  Hegelians 
choose. 


IX 

NIETZSCHE  ' 

We  owe  a  debt  of  love,  all  of  us,  to  Friedrich 
Nietzsche,  and  it  is  time  to  pay  it.  His  brain 
stopped  thinking  in  January,  1889;  his  heart 
stopped  beating  in  August,  1900.  Ten  years, 
twenty  years,  have  passed;  and  we  may  smile 
again  with  the  wise,  sad  smile  of  a  poor  Zara- 
thustra  who  fainted  on  the  mountain-tops  for 
holy  envy  of  heaven,  a  loving  spirit  eternally 
repulsed  by  fellow  men  unworthy  of  his  love,  a 
convalescent  Siegfried  banished  to  the  pensions 
de  lu^e  of  the  Darwinian  and  Wagnerian  Europe 
of  our  childhood.  How  unkind  we  have  been  to 
him!  That  cold,  white,  plump  face  of  his;  those 
eyes,  now  soft  as  the  poetry  of  a  lonely  lake,  now 
fiery  as  if  reflecting  the  mad  course  of  a  comet; 
that  sonorous  voice,  too  loud  and  full  and  or- 
chestral, perhaps,  for  smaller  and  more  sensitive 
ears — we  have  forgotten  them  all,  and  we  have 
been  willing  to  forget.  His  books  are  put  aside, 
sold,  lost,  behind  others,  under  others.  His 
thought,  if  it  ever  passes  before  our  thought,  is 

*  Written  d  propos  of  Daniel  Halevy's  La  Vie  de  F.  Nietzsche, 
Paris,  1909. 

114 


NIETZSCHE  115 

like  one  of  Hoffmann's  revenants  before  an  "oval 
mirror,"  like  the  last  trace  of  a  glowing,  dazzling 
electric  light  fit  for  the  Gdtterddmmerung ,  or 
like  the  memory  of  a  thousand  meteors  that  have 
sped  hissing  through  the  sky,  mocking  the  rockets 
of  men  and  the  rays  of  the  sun,  and  fallen,  dust 
and  ashes,  into  the  silent  dark  of  nothingness. 

But  who  among  us  cannot  recall  some  August 
day,  some  hour  of  intense  heat  and  of  manly  joy, 
when  the  words  of  Nietzsche  lashed  our  hearts 
to  the  gallop,  pulsed  in  our  veins,  and  brought 
us  an  Alpine  wind  of  strength  and  liberty?  Can 
you  forget,  O  friend  lost  to  me  now  though  still 
alive,  that  lonely  summit  of  Pratomagno  whence 
our  voices,  musical  with  emotion,  shouted  the  red 
and  shameless  phrases  of  the  Zarathustra  into 
the  cool  air  of  the  Casentino?  Later  on  came 
that  criticism  which  trails  greatness  and  seeks  to 
belittle  it;  later  still  the  senile  calm  of  the  years 
of  reflection.  As  we  grew  serious  we  grew  weak 
and  faint  in  spirit.  Philosophy  opened  its 
mouth,  set  all  things  in  place,  began  and  closed 
its  paragraph ;  and  hf e,  that  had  overflowed  and 
sped  toward  shores  unnamed  in  atlases,  shrank 
within  the  brick  beds  of  straight  canals,  and  mir- 
rored without  restlessness  the  white  clouds  of 
heaven  and  the  grasses  of  the  narrow  banks. 

Perhaps  the  time  has  come  for  setting  sail 
again.     Whither? 

The  turmoil  of  passions  has  been  stilled,  ship- 


116  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

wreck  no  longer  frightens  us,  the  phantom  ves- 
sels are  all  sunk  in  the  luminous  depths  of  the 
sea.  We  have  learned  the  art  of  war  without 
the  blare  of  trumpets,  without  shouts  of  com- 
mand, without  the  shedding  of  blood;  yet  our 
blood  boils  within  us,  and  of  this  we  shall  die. 
We  may  well  return  to  Nietzsche. 

Others,  forgers  and  traitors,  have  had  their  say. 
Are  we  rid  of  you  now,  you  parlor  wildcats,  you 
little  Neros  drunk  with  undigested  egotism,  you 
hypocritical  scoundrels  who  interpreted  the 
winged  words  of  Zarathustra  after  the  fashion  of 
butchers  and  harem-keepers?  And  you  too, 
worthy  doctors  and  illustrious  professors,  have 
you  finished  your  petty  post-mortems  on  the 
body  of  the  hero  who  awaits  his  resurrection? 
Have  you  found  all  the  sources,  have  you  made 
all  the  comparisons,  have  you  registered  all  the 
subtle  interpretations,  all  the  weighty  objections? 
Posthumous  spies  have  gathered  his  souvenirs; 
faithless  correspondents  have  sold  his  letters  for 
the  sound  of  silver;  the  Archive  is  established; 
the  catalogue  is  complete;  the  bibliography  is 
ready;  his  poor  Polish  name  has  found  its  place 
in  every  "author  index."    Your  turn  is  past. 

Our  turn  has  come:  the  turn  of  those  who 
loved  him,  scorned  him,  hated  him,  sought  to  for- 
get him,  were  yet  faithful  to  him,  embraced  him 
even  amid  scorn,  stood  by  his  side  when  he  had 
been  abandoned.    Our  turn  has  come  at  last. 


NIETZSCHE  117 

There  is  room  now  for  love.  The  smirching 
caresses  of  fashion  are  bestowed  elsewhere. 

Years  ago  a  swarm  of  noisy  wasps  hovered 
about  the  gentle  paralytic  of  Weimar,  and  when 
a  ray  of  light  made  their  wings  gleam  they  said 
that  they  had  been  turned  to  gold,  that  the  world 
had  been  turned  upside  down,  that  man  had 
stolen  the  keys  of  the  earthly  paradise,  and  that 
heaven  had  come  down  to  hell.  In  those  years 
no  gentleman  could  linger  in  such  company. 
Cowardly  homicides  might  abide  there,  or  nabobs 
smitten  with  meningitis,  or  nouvellistes  without 
ideas — not  men  with  hungering  souls  to  nourish 
and  to  save.  But  now  the  chaffering  crowd  has 
been  dispersed.  The  wasps  have  winged  their 
way  to  new  scenes  of  dissolution ;  and  around  him 
now  there  is  that  silence,  that  calm,  that  Medi- 
terranean serenity  which  he  himself  breathed  in 
the  blue  bays  of  Liguria.  The  last  codicil  of  his 
will  has  been  opened:  Ecce  H07110.  He  stands 
before  us  crowned  with  the  thorns  of  the  adora- 
tion that  does  not  understand,  buffeted  by  indif- 
ference, stabbed  by  doubt.  His  life  lies  open 
before  us.  We  may  be  his  friends,  may  press  his 
hand,  may  offer  him  in  death  that  fellowship  in 
perilous  pilgrimage  that  he  never  knew  in  life. 

Think  what  you  will  of  the  philosophy  of 
Nietzsche.  I  leave  it  freely  to  your  caprice.  His 
doctrine  is  one  of  those  poetic,  tragic  doctrines 
which  answer  to  the  temper,  the  Hfe,  the  spirit  of 


118  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

a  man.  If  your  spirit  is  of  other  metal,  if  your 
temper  is  from  another  anvil,  if  you  have  sped 
through  life  on  other  tracks,  you  cannot  under- 
stand, nor  love,  nor  follow,  the  doctrine  of 
Nietzsche.  So  be  it.  Different  experiences  call 
for  different  cosmic  words  and  different  moral 
banners.  But  if  you  will  not  respect  his  phi- 
losophy, if  you  will  continue,  like  all  the  witless 
moths  of  all  the  continents,  to  regard  it  as  a 
fricassee  of  paradoxes,  fit  for  rude  arrivistes^  you 
must  at  least  respect  the  soul  of  him  who  thought 
and  wrote  it. 

I  declare  to  you  that  I  do  not  know  of  any 
modern  life  nobler,  purer,  sadder,  lonelier,  more 
hopeless  than  that  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche.  Be- 
ing no  hypocrite,  I  confess  frankly  that  I  owe 
the  force  of  this  conviction  to  the  simple,  clear, 
and  searching  biography  of  Nietzsche  written 
recently  by  Daniel  Halevy.  Any  man  who  can 
read  this  book  and  not  be  moved  to  the  depths  of 
his  being,  especially  by  the  later  chapters,  is  a 
groveling  beast. 

There  stands  revealed  in  these  four  hundred 
pages  of  calm,  intelligent,  French  prose  a 
Nietzsche  whom  we  had  glimpsed  already  from 
passages  in  his  letters  and  from  confessions 
sobbed  out,  but  quickly  denied  and  transcended, 
in  his  works — a  pure,  a  saintly,  a  martyred 
Nietzsche.  How  different  such  a  tribute  from 
the  utterances  of  the  bloodthirsty  monkeys  who 


NIETZSCHE  119 

have  disported  themselves,  in  parlors  and  in 
novels,  under  the  utterly  false  name  of  disciples 
of  Zarathustra! 

In  1880  Nietzsche  was  living  in  Genoa,  at  No. 
8  Salita  delle  Battistine.  He  led  a  sober,  poor, 
and  lonely  life.  His  Genoese  neighbors  called 
him  the  saint.  This  first  judgment  of  humble 
and  ingenuous  Italians — the  only  judgment  that 
Italy  expressed,  before  1894,  of  a  man  who  for 
so  great  a  part  of  his  life  suffered  or  found  joy. 
beside  our  seas — ^this  judgment  is  perhaps  the 
deepest  and  the  sanest  that  our  fellow-country- 
men have  as  yet  pronounced  with  regard  to 
Nietzsche. 

What  other  name,  indeed,  than  that  of  saint 
would  you  give  to  a  man  who  from  his  boyhood 
was  fired  with  the  pure  thirst  for  truth,  who 
through  all  his  life  scorned  honors,  winnings, 
friendships  founded  on  fiction,  triumphs  owed  to 
servility  and  to  cowardice,  the  soft  mattresses  of 
faith,  the  embraces  of  militant  Philistinism,  half 
measures  and  half  figures,  compromises  and  rev- 
erences? 

What  other  name  can  you  give,  if  you  please, 
to  one  who  was  never  daunted  by  his  own 
thought ;  who  changed  his  mind  only  at  the  com- 
mand of  his  severe  self,  never  at  the  command 
of  another ;  who  sent  his  glance  to  the  very  bot- 
tom of  the  widest  and  darkest  abysses  of  human 
fate;  who  loved  danger,  peril,  suffering,  who 


120   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

would  not  put  a  coat  of  mail  upon  a  young  and 
eager  heart ;  who  did  not  tremble  when  he  beheld 
the  constellations  of  the  moral  heaven  grow  pale, 
fall  from  their  place,  and  die,  nor  when  his 
Heraclitean  fancy  saw  the  wheel  of  the  universe 
revolving  ever  on  the  same  axis,  returning  ever 
to  the  same  points  at  the  same  times?  A  man 
who  was  content  with  little  bread,  who  scarcely 
knew  the  love  of  woman,  who  lived  poor,  wan- 
dering, a  stranger  ever,  who  had  no  friends  of 
his  own  stature,  who  was  half  understood,  who 
dragged  his  suffering  body  and  his  acid  thought 
into  the  lowliest  inns  and  the  broadest  solitudes 
of  Alpine  and  Mediterranean  Europe,  and  yet 
refused  to  draw  back,  to  stop,  to  wear  a  mask  or 
win  ignoble  comfort — a  man  who,  with  a  manly 
soul  full  of  pride,  of  poetry,  and  of  grief,  built 
up  his  moral  personality  hour  by  hour  even  to 
the  expected  day  of  his  spiritual  death — such  a 
man,  I  say,  whatever  bigots  or  hagiographers  or 
fools  may  call  him,  is  a  saint. 

His  was  the  love  of  a  secret  ideal,  of  another 
world,  cleaner,  free-aired,  whereof  his  thoughts, 
solidified  in  fragments  or  in  poems,  give  us  but 
glimpses.  How  different  this  passion  from  the 
physical  breathlessness  that  drove  him  from  the 
mountains  to  the  sea,  his  brain  wounded  as  by 
the  point  of  a  compass — thought — which  never 
found  its  centre,  his  princely  heart  loving  madly, 


NIETZSCHE  121 

yet  repulsing  those  about  him,  lest,  if  he  gave 
way  to  love,  love  should  bring  death! 

I  am  not  inventing  his  idealism.  He  was  ideal- 
istic even  from  his  youth.  Who  would  expect 
to  find  ^lazzini  entering  the  life  of  Nietzsche — 
the  one  the  champion  of  the  rights  of  men  and 
our  moral  mission,  the  other  the  champion  of  the 
rights  of  the  body  and  the  reversal  of  values  ?  In 
1871  Nietzsche  crossed  the  Gotthard  to  Lugano. 
In  the  diligence  he  found  an  old  man,  with  whom 
he  entered  into  conversation.  The  two  became 
enthusiastic,  finding  each  other  in  agreement  on 
many  things.  The  old  man  quoted  to  Nietzsche 
one  of  the  noblest  maxims  of  Goethe:  "Sich  des 
halben  zu  entwohnen  und  im  Ganzen,  Vollen, 
Schonen,  resolut  zu  leben."  Nietzsche  never  for- 
got that  thought,  nor  the  man  who  had  brought 
it  to  his  attention.  That  man  was  Mazzini. 
Nietzsche  said  later,  to  Malwida  von  Meysenbug: 
"There  is  no  other  man  whom  I  esteem  as  I 
esteem  Mazzini."  And  he  was  sincere.  Let 
whoso  will  explain  the  apparent  difference  be- 
tween two  such  heroes. 

Nietzsche  had  neither  wife  nor  mistress ;  he  had 
friends  among  women;  he  had  for  some  time  a 
quasi-fiancee — Lou  Salome — he  had  a  sister  who 
pretended  to  understand  him,  and  followed  him 
as  best  she  could.  But  if  woman  had  but  a  slight 
part  in  his  hfe — as  is  the  case  with  all  saints — 
friendship  played  a  very  great  part  in  it.    A  man 


122   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

who  felt  friendship  as  deej^ly  and  solemnly  as  he 
did  could  not  be  common,  though  he  should  write 
no  more  than  a  manual  of  Piedmontese  cookery. 
His  days  at  Triebschen  with  Wagner  and  Cosima 
are  the  sunniest  bay  of  his  hfe.  The  affectionate 
esteem  of  Rohde  and  of  Burcldiardt,  the  warm 
deference  of  Paul  Ree,  of  Peter  Gast,  of  Stein, 
of  Lanzki,  were  the  best  of  the  few  uncertain 
comforts  that  humanity  gave  him.  But  what 
pain  as  well!  When  Wagner  ceased  to  under- 
stand him  and  he  realized  what  Wagner  was  ( sad 
discovery:  a  charlatan,  perilous  because  he  was 
inspired!) ;  when  Paul  Ree  betrayed  him,  when 
Erwin  Rohde,  a  professor  to  the  last  auricle  of 
his  heart,  refused  the  smile  and  the  embrace  that 
would  have  spared  him  overwhelming  grief; 
when  the  others  left  him  alone  or  treated  him  as 
an  amiable  decoy,  as  a  poetic  "original";  then 
the  blood-drops  of  his  wounded  heart  fell  one  by 
one,  not  outwardly  upon  his  flesh — as  in  the 
crucifixions  of  ancient  Rome — but  within  him. 
And  httle  by  little  they  killed  him:  "Where  are 
ye,  friends?    Come,  it  is  time,  it  is  time!" 

That  song  written  at  night  in  Rome  within  the 
eternal  sound  of  the  fountain — "my  heart  too  is 
an  overflowing  fountain" — is  perhaps  the  most 
ardent  declaration  of  love  that  genius  ever  ad- 
dressed to  deaf  humanity.  But  men  are  prone 
to  prefer  a  casual  flattery  to  the  ennobling  influ- 
ence of  a  true  love.    And  they  gave  no  heed. 


NIETZSCHE  123 

"Evening  of  my  life !  the  sun  sets ;  soon  thou  wilt 
no  longer  thirst,  O  thirsty  heart."  He  wrote 
the  Ecce  Homo;  he  wrote  to  Peter  Gast,  signing 
himself  "The  Crucified,"  and  to  Cosima  Wagner, 
saying,  "Ariadne,  I  love  thee."  In  these  two  last 
letters — which  seemed  to  carry  the  final  evidence 
of  his  madness — we  have  the  clearest  confessions 
of  his  destiny.  Nietzsche  was  content  to  be  an 
Antichrist,  and  in  being  an  Antichrist  he  was 
perforce  to  some  extent  a  Christ.  He  was  a 
Dionysos  of  grief,  a  man  tormented  by  others 
and  by  himself.  He  died,  I  assure  you,  as  on  a 
Palestinian  cross. 

To  Cosima  Wagner,  in  the  last  hour  before  the 
clouding  of  his  mind,  he  wrote  his  love.  Cosima 
Wagner  was  to  him  Ariadne,  and  Ariadne  meant 
love.  Perhaps  he  had  loved  her  secretly;  perhaps 
in  his  break  with  Wagner  there  was  an  element 
of  jealousy.  However  that  may  be,  that  final 
declaration  of  his  is  far  more  profound,  far  more 
weighty  than  it  seems.  For  Cosima-Ariadne  was 
to  him  humanity  itself,  joyous,  laughing,  full  of 
life  and  strength — that  same  humanity  that  had 
been  the  support  of  Wagner  in  his  triumph. 

For  Nietzsche,  that  support  had  failed.  His 
love  had  found  no  chance  to  spend  itself  in  full- 
ness and  in  liberty.  It  was  indeed  of  love,  shut 
in  and  unappeased,  that  Nietzsche  died.  We 
slew  him — all  of  us — by  our  common  human  be- 
havior.   Nor  will  he  be  our  last  victim. 


X 

WALT  WHITMAN  * 


I  CANNOT  write  of  Walt  Whitman,  I  confess, 
with  an  easy  objectivity.  The  soul  and  the  verse 
of  the  sage  of  Manhattan  are  too  intimately  re- 
lated in  my  mind  to  one  of  the  most  important 
discoveries  of  my  early  youth:  the  discovery  of 
poetry. 

Among  my  father's  books  I  found  the  two 
little  five-cent  volumes  of  the  Biblioteca  Uni- 
versale in  which  Gamberale  had  published  part 
of  his  translation  of  Whitman;  and  I  read  them 
and  reread  them  with  that  enthusiasm  which  does 
not  survive  the  teens.  Though  I  was  no  bour- 
geois gentilhomme  I  had  then  no  clear  idea  of 
the  difference  between  verse  and  prose ;  and  I  did 
not  stop  to  inquire  why  these  songs  were  com- 

*  Written  A  propos  of  L.  Gamberale's  version  of  the  L«aves  of 
Grass:  Foglie  di  erba,  Palermo,  1908. 

In  the  present  translation  the  Italian  quotations  from  Whitman 
are  replaced  by  the  corresponding  passages  of  the  English  text  as 
printed  in  the  edition  of  Leaves  of  Grass  published  by  Doubleday, 
Page  and  Company  in  1920.  The  page  references  in  the  footnotes 
are  to  this  edition. 

124 


WALT  WHITMAN  125 

posed  of  verses  so  long  as  to  fill  two  or  three  lines 
of  print.  I  read  them — I  breathed  in  the  poetry 
of  the  sea,  of  the  city,  of  the  universe — without  a 
thought  of  the  pale  scholars  who  count  the 
syllables  of  a  soul  in  emotion  as  they  would  count, 
if  they  could,  the  notes  of  the  nightingale  that 
sings  for  love. 

And  I  must  confess  that  I,  a  Tuscan,  an 
Italian,  a  Latin,  learned  the  meaning  of  poetry 
not  through  Virgil  or  through  Dante — much  less 
through  the  casuist  Petrarch  or  the  mosaicist 
Tasso,  poets  de  luxe,  and  therefore  men  of  letters 
rather  than  poets — but  through  the  puerile 
enumerations  and  the  long,  passionate  invoca- 
tions of  the  good  reaper  of  the  Leaves  of  Grass, 
Even  today,  though  so  many  years  have  passed, 
I  cannot  read  without  emotion  the  Whispers  of 
Heavenly  Death  or  There  Was  a  Child  Went 
Forth.  Later  on  I  read  the  Leaves  of  Grass  in 
English,  became  acquainted,  through  thick 
American  volumes,  with  the  life  and  the  counte- 
nance of  Whitman,  and  studied  in  Jannacone's 
little  book  the  metrical  questions  raised  by  Whit- 
man's verse.  But  I  have  never  forgotten  those 
wondrous  hours  of  my  boyhood. 

I  am  not  saying  all  this  for  the  sake  of  writing 
an  uncalled-for  bit  of  spiritual  autobiography, 
but  just  to  explain  why  I  cannot  speak  of  Whit- 
man as  if  he  were  one  of  the  ordinary  foreign 
poets  reserved  for  special  importation  by  pro- 


126   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

fessors  in  female  seminaries,  and  to  make  it 
clear  that  I  can  speak  of  him  only  as  a  loving 
brother  may  speak  of  a  brother  beloved,  as  a 
humble  younger  brother  may  speak  of  a  great 
elder  brother  who  is  dead. 

How  glad  I  would  be  if  I  might  convey  to 
others  something  of  my  deep  affection,  if  I 
might  present  to  my  readers  a  living,  faithful 
image  of  the  soul  of  the  poet  whom  I  love — a 
soul  childlike  and  great,  inebriate  with  joy  and 
heavy  with  sadness. 

I  do  not  care  to  discuss  the  facts  of  his  life. 
What  matters  it  just  when  he  was  a  printer,  a 
reporter,  a  carpenter,  a  nurse,  a  government 
employee,  a  patriarch  of  democracy?  I  know 
that  he  was  born  in  America  in  1819,  that  he 
never  left  his  country,  and  that  he  died  in  1892. 
I  know  that  in  life  he  was  just  what  he  is  in  his 
songs:  a  complete,  simple,  loyal  man,  a  lover  of 
nature  and  of  men,  full  of  hope,  a  giver  of  joy. 
Howells,  who  saw  him,  writes:  "His  eyes  and 
his  voice  revealed  a  frank,  irresistible  offer  of 
friendship;  he  gave  his  hand  in  such  a  way  that 
it  was  ours  to  hold  forever."  And  another,  who 
saw  his  body  the  day  after  his  death,  writes: 
"His  face  is  that  of  an  affectionate  and  aged 
child."  Whenever  I  learn  of  such  an  honorable 
accordance  between  life  and  poetry  I  take  de- 
light in  it;  and  I  prefer  those  poets  who  have 
sung  the  grief  of  their  own  hearts  to  those  whose 


WALT  WHITMAN  127 

versification  of  all  possible  sentiments  proceeds 
from  the  depths  of  a  comfortable  armchair. 

But  I  care  less  for  the  whole  course  of  a  man's 
life  than  for  his  own  distilling  of  its  essence. 
Minute  biographers  have  always  seemed  to  me 
like  those  who,  not  content  with  the  taste  of  a 
noble  wine,  should  seek  the  stems  of  the  grapes 
from  which  it  came.  Knowledge  of  the  external 
life  of  a  great  man  may  satisfy  the  curiosity  of 
the  amateur  d'dmes  or  the  collector  of  anecdotes 
— and  it  may  serve  indeed  to  inspire  great 
achievement — but  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
value  or  the  real  significance  of  his  work. 

External  biography  is  even  more  than  usually 
out  of  place  in  the  case  of  Whitman,  for  he  is  a 
universal  poet,  a  poet  not  of  the  part  but  of  the 
whole,  a  poet  not  merely  of  America  but  of  the 
world ;  and  on  the  other  hand  he  is  a  poet  so  per- 
sonal, so  individual,  so  intimate,  that  he  could 
rightly  say: 

Camerado,  this  is  no  book. 

Who  touches  this,  touches  a  man.^ 

In  his  songs,  therefore,  you  may  find  the  man's 
whole  message — all  that  he  wished  to  say,  to 
teach,  and  to  leave  to  those  who  loved  him,  to  his 
comrades,  to  mankind.  The  hundred  and  other 
hundred  Leaves  of  Grass  are  the  truly  immortal 
portion  of  his  soul. 

» Vol.  n,  p.  289. 


128  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Nor  will  I,  in  writing  of  Whitman,  follow  the 
plan  of  those  who,  having  nothing  of  their  own 
to  say,  proceed  to  a  mechanical  analysis  of  style. 
And  yet,  in  the  case  of  Whitman,  there  are 
choice  questions  of  metrical  jurisprudence  to 
be  proposed  and  solved.  One  might  ask 
whether  the  poetry  of  Whitman  is  truly  metrical, 
as  Whitman  himself  declared,  and  others — 
Noel,  Stedman,  Gamberale — have  repeated;  or 
whether  it  has  a  dactylic  cadence,  as  Macaulay 
believed,  or  a  sort  of  consonantal  rhythm,  as 
Triggs  maintains,  or  a  latent  rhythmic  harmony 
with  psychic  rhyme  and  strophic  period,  as  our 
own  Jannacone  has  it.  Or  again,  one  might  fol- 
low O'Connor  and  Nencioni  in  the  endeavor  to 
decide  which  movements  in  nature  the  song  of 
Whitman  most  resembles — whether  forest  winds 
or  ocean  waves — or  one  might  investigate  the 
influence  of  Whitman's  theories  as  to  the  relation 
between  prose  and  verse  on  the  French  move- 
ment of  the  verslibristcs.  And  if  one  had  plenty 
of  time  to  waste,  one  might  also  consider  Whit- 
man's favorite  rhetorical  figure,  enumeration, 
and  compare  it  with  Homer's  periphrasis, 
Dante's  metonymy,  Victor  Hugo's  antithesis, 
and  d'Annunzio's  metaphor.  But  all  this  fine 
research  is  not  for  us,  for  what  we  seek  in  the 
world  and  in  men  is  spiritual  activity,  and  what 
we  seek  in  the  spirit  is  ideas. 

Walt  Whitman  wrote  a  few  songs  which  are 


WALT  WHITMAN  129 

marvelous  for  their  pure  poetry,  for  their  music, 
for  their  imagery,  and  for  their  choice  of  words, 
but  fortunately  he  did  not  write  to  amuse  people 
or  to  please  the  publishers. 

Walt  Whitman  has  something  to  say  to  men, 
and  is  eager  that  men  should  listen.  That  they 
may  hear  the  better,  he  "sings  full-voiced  his 
vahant  and  melodious  songs."  Our  duty,  the 
duty  of  those  who  love  him,  is  to  distil  from  these 
full-voiced  songs  the  poet's  thought — that  which 
he  entrusted  lovingly  to  himself,  to  his  comrades, 
to  his  followers,  to  all  of  us. 


II 


Why  did  Walt  Whitman  turn  to  the  writing 
of  verse?  Because  he  was  a  man  of  letters  by 
instinct?  To  win  fame?  Because  there  was 
nothing  else  that  he  could  do?  By  no  means. 
Walt  Whitman,  before  becoming  a  poet,  had 
been  a  worker,  the  son  of  a  carpenter,  able  to  saw 
logs  and  make  tables.  He  was  far  from  being 
one  of  those  mosaicists  in  adjectives  whose 
horizon  is  an  inkstand  and  whose  only  goal  is  the 
favor  of  critics  and  of  ladies : 

Did  you  ask  dulcet  rhymes  from  me  ? 

Did    you    seek    the    civilian's    peaceful    and    languishing 

rhymes?  .  .  . 
What  to  such  as  you  anyhow  such  a  poet  as  I?  therefore 

leave  my  works. 


130  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

And  go  lull  yourself  with  what  you  can  understand,  and 

with  piano-tunes, 
For  I  lull  nobody,  and  you  will  never  understand  me.^ 

Thus  he  writes  To  a  Certain  Civilian.  So  then 
the  purpose  of  his  volume  is  not  to  amuse  people, 
nor  to  soothe  sensitive  ears,  nor  to  delight 
students  of  metrics.  His  ideal  is  not  the  classic 
^olian  harp,  but  rather  the  hoarse  locomotive, 
with  its  "madly-whistled  laughter,  echoing, 
rumbling  like  an  earthquake,  rousing  all."  ^  He 
has  no  fear  of  professors  of  poetry ;  he  is  content 
to  contemplate  the  awe  of  a  Colorado  canyon: 

Was't  charged  against  my  chants  they  had  forgotten  art? 
To  fuse  within  themselves  its  rules  precise  and  delicatesse? 
The  lyrist's  measur'd  beat,  the  wrought-out  temple's  grace 
— column  and  polish'd  arch  forgot  ?  ^ 

"What  do  I  care?" — Whitman  seems  to  say — 
"all  this  is  but  literature": 

I  sound  my  barbaric  yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the  world.* 

He  sings  not  for  the  sake  of  singing,  but  that 
he  may  rouse  men,  educate  them,  inspire  them: 

I  am  he  who  tauntingly  compels  men,  women,  nations. 
Crying,  Leap  from  your  seats  and  contend  for  your  lives !  ^ 

I  am  the  teacher  of  athletes. 

He  that  by  me  spreads  a  wider  breast  than  my  own  proves 

the  width  of  my  own.*' 

» Vol.  II,  p.  89.  *  Vol.  I,  p.  108. 

"  Vol.  II,  p.  254.  *  Vol.  II,  p.  109. 

«Vol.  II,  p.  2.68.  "Vol.  I,  p.  103. 


WALT  WHITMAN  131 

And  of  necessity,  since  he  would  educate,  he 
must  be  rough  and  without  compliments : 

No  dainty  dolce  afFettuoso  I, 

Bearded^  sun-burnt,  gray-neck'd,  forbidding,  I  have  arrived, 
To  be  wrestled  with  as  I  pass  for  the  solid  prizes  of  the 
universe.^ 

He  is,  then,  less  a  poet  in  the  modern  sense 
than  a  prophet,  a  votes  in  the  ancient  sense.  He 
is  not  the  singer  of  certain  specific  things  or  of 
a  few  sentiments :  he  is  the  poet  of  the  universal, 
of  the  all,  of  the  ensemble. 

There  are  poets  who  sing  only  the  love  of 
woman,  others  who  sing  only  the  love  of  nature, 
others  yet  who  sing  only  the  love  of  fatherland 
or  of  mankind  or  of  themselves.  Whitman  sings 
all  these  loves  together,  and  others  as  well: 

I  will  not  make  poems  with  reference  to  parts, 

But  I  will  make  poems,  songs,  thoughts,  with  reference  to 

ensemble. 
And   I   will  not  sing  with   reference   to   a   day,  but  with 

reference  to  all  days.^ 

All  must  have  reference  to  the  ensemble  of  the  world,  and 
the  compact  truth  of  the  world,^ 

And  he  has  heard  the  command  of  the  Muse: 

Sing  me  a  song  no  poet  yet  has  chanted. 
Sing  me  the  universal.* 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  29.  '  Vol.  II,  p.  161. 

»  Vol.  I,  pp.  25-26.  « Vol.  I,  p.  276. 


132  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Else  why  should  all  men  listen  to  his  songs? 

At  first  sight,  on  the  contrary,  Whitman  seems 
the  most  personal  of  poets,  or  at  least  the  most 
sincere  of  egotists.  Is  he  not  the  proud  author 
of  the  Song  of  Myself?  His  very  first  line  is 
this: 

One's-self  I  sing,  a  simple  separate  person.^ 

And  again  he  says: 

I  celebrate  myself,  and  sing  myself.^ 

His  own  personality  recurs  frequently  in  his 
songs,  and  not  under  the  abstract  and  inde- 
terminate title  I,  but  with  the  face  and  the 
clothes  of  Walt  Whitman : 

Walt  Whitman,  a  kosmos,  of  Manhattan  the  son, 
Turbulent,  fleshy,  sensual,  eating,  drinking  and  breeding.' 

Behold  this  swarthy  face,  these  gray  eyes, 
This  beard,  the  white  wool  unclipt  upon  my  neck. 
My  brown   hands   and   the   silent  manner  of  me  without 
charm.* 

Divine  am  I  inside  and  out,  and  I  make  holy  whatever  I 

touch  or  am  touch'd  from  .  .   . 
This  head  more  than  churches,  bibles,  and  all  the  creeds.' 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  regard  this  adora- 
tion of  the  self  as  a  proof  of  Whitman's  indi- 
vidualism.   He  adores  the  self  because  he  adores 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  1.  "  Vol.  I,  p.  152. 

^  Vol.  I,  p.  33.  "  Vol.  I,  p.  63. 

=  Vol.  I,  p.  62, 


WALT  WHITMAN  133 

the  all,  sees  the  all  reflected  in  the  self,  and  feels 
the  self  intimately  mingled  with  the  all.  Ad- 
dressing an  unknown  friend,  he  says: 

We  become  plants,  trunks,  foliage,  roots,  bark, 

We  are  bedded  in  the  ground,  we  are  rocks, 

We  are  oaks,  we  grow  in  the  openings  side  by  side.^ 

The  enumeration  goes  on  and  on,  in  the  en- 
deavor to  suggest  effectively  this  sense  of  oneness 
with  all  things.  He  is  conscious  of  himself  as 
being  the  universal  spirit,  as  being  breath  and 
air,  as  the  God  of  a  pantheistic  world  (if  you  will 
permit  the  paradox)  might  be  conscious  of  him- 
self: 

Santa  Spirita,  breather,  life. 

Beyond  the  light,  lighter  than  light. 

Beyond  the  flames  of  hell,  joyous,  leaping  easily  above  hell. 

Beyond  Paradise,  perfumed  solely  with  mine  own  perfume. 

Including  all  life  on  earth,  touching,  including  God,  in- 
cluding Saviour  and  Satan, 

Ethereal,  pervading  all,  (for  without  me  what  were  all? 
what  were  God?) 

Essence  of  forms,  life  of  the  real  identities,  permanent, 
positive,  (namely  the  unseen,) 

Life  of  the  great  round  world,  the  sun  and  stars,  and  of 
man,  I,  the  general  soul.^ 

In  this  sense  Walt  Whitman  may  even  be 
called  a  mystic.  Yet  he  is  very  unlike  other 
mystics,  for  he  does  not  lose  himself  in  God,  but 
aspires,  as  it  were,  to  be  so  universal  as  to  include 

>  Vol.  I,  p.  132.  '  Vol.  II,  pp.  224-25. 


134  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

God  Himself  within  his  soul.  At  other  times  he 
desires  "to  be  indeed  a  God";  ^  says  "that  there  is 
no  God  any  more  divine  than  Yourself";^  or 
delights  "to  be  this  incredible  God  I  am."  ^  In 
one  of  the  songs  entitled  Whispers  of  Heavenly 
Death  he  openly  proclaims  himself  as  the  most 
powerful  of  Gods: 

Consolator  most  mild,  the  promis'd  one  advancing, 
With  gentle  hand  extended,  the  mightier  God  am  I, 
Foretold  by  prophets  and  poets  in  their  most  rapt  prophe- 
cies and  poems  .  .  . 
All  sorrow,  labor,  suffering,  I,  tallying  it,  absorb  in  myself.* 

And  he  includes  within  himself  not  merely  all 
things,  but  all  times  as  well: 

I  know  that  the  past  was  great  and  the  future  will  be  great. 
And  I  know  that  both  curiously  conjoint  in  the  present 

time  .  .  . 
And  that  where  I  am  or  you  are  this  present  day,  there  is 

the  centre  of  all  days,  all  races. 
And  there  is  the  meaning  to  us  of  all  that  has  ever  come  of 

races  and  days,  or  ever  will  come.^ 

Furthermore,  he  comprises  in  himself  not  only 
all  things  and  all  times,  but  all  men,  men  of  all 
conditions  and  of  all  ages.  In  the  Song  of  My- 
self, at  the  close  of  one  of  his  endless  enumera- 
tions of  men,  he  asserts : 

And  these  tend  inward  to  me,  and  I  tend  outward  to  them. 

And  such  as  it  is  to  be  of  these  more  or  less  I  am. 

And  of  these  one  and  all  I  weave  the  song  of  myself.^ 

^  Vol.  I,  p.  221.  "  Vol.  II,  p.  223. 

^  Vol.  II,  p.  161.  •  Vol.  I,  p.  294. 

^  Vol.  II,  p.  279.  •  Vol.  I,  p.  52. 


WALT  WHITMAN  135 

His  most  poetic  expression  of  this  identity 
with  all  things  and  all  men  is  the  famous  poem 
which  begins: 

There  was  a  child  went  forth  every  day. 

And  the  first  object  he  look'd  upon,  that  object  he  became, 

And  that  object  became  part  of  him  for  the  day  or  a  certain 

part  of  the  day, 
Or  for  many  years  or  stretching  cycles  of  years  .  .  . 
These  became  part  of  that  child  who  went  forth  every  day, 

and  who  now  goes,  and  will  always  go  forth  every  day.^ 

The  personality  of  Walt  Whitman  is  then  but 
the  dress,  the  rind  of  his  cosmic  love.  Like  all 
great  souls  he  aspires  to  the  complete  and  the 
infinite,  but  he  does  not  seek  to  attain  complete- 
ness by  means  of  general  and  abstract  terms. 
Just  as  his  mysticism  is  an  enormous  amphfica- 
tion  of  his  egotism,  so  his  love  for  the  universal 
manifests  itself  as  a  love  of  every  single  detail. 
He  would  reach  the  infinite  by  dint  of  the  ac- 
cumulation of  finite  things.  Mad  though  the  ef- 
fort be,  perilous  though  it  be  from  the  point  of 
view  of  poetry,  since  it  compels  interminable  enu- 
merations, one  must  recognize  that  his  constant 
insistence  on  particular  things,  and  on  the 
greatest  possible  number  of  particular  things, 
suggests  amplitude  and  universality  more  effec- 
tively than  the  abstract  phrases  with  which 
philosophers  and  cpntemplatives  are  so  well  sat- 
isfied. 

'  Vol.  II,  pp.  135-38. 


136  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

So  overflowing  is  his  love  for  the  universe  that 
it  could  not  find  sufficient  utterance  if  he  were 
obliged  to  limit  his  expressions  of  love  to  things 
in  general,  to  the  all,  to  the  infinite,  to  God.  He 
must  needs  express  to  every  single  object  his 
admiration  and  his  affection,  his  pleasure  and  his 
wonder.  As  he  looks  upon  the  world,  Walt 
Whitman  is  an  optimist.  An  optimist,  did  I  say? 
No,  that  is  a  cold  and  technical  word,  and  will 
not  serve  for  him.  Say  rather  a  passionate  lover, 
a  worshipper  of  the  all — not  so  blind  as  to  be 
unaware  of  the  ugly  and  the  evil,  but  so  great 
as  to  extend  his  love  to  the  ugly  and  the  evil. 

He  is  by  instinct  and  by  program  the  champion 
of  all  things : 

And  henceforth  I  will  go  celebrate  any  thing  I  see  or  am, 
And  sing  and  laugh  and  deny  nothing.^ 

To  his  magnificent  soul  all  is  magnificent: 

Illustrious  every  one ! 

Illustrious    what   we   name    space,   sphere   of   unnumber'd 

spirits. 
Illustrious  the  mystery  of  motion  in  all  beings,  even  the 

tiniest  insect, 
Illustrious  the  attribute  of  speech,  the  senses,  the  body. 
Illustrious  the  passing  light — illustrious  the  pale  reflection 

on  the  new  moon  in  the  western  sky, 
Illustrious  whatever  I  see  or  hear  or  touch,  to  the  last. 
Good  in  all.^ 

All  beautiful  to  me,  all  wondrous.' 
» Vol.  II,  p.  258.  » Vol.  II,  p.  278.  'Vol.  I,  p.  110. 


WALT  WHITMAN  137 

After  reading  Hegel,  he  meditates: 

Roaming  in  thought  over  the  Universe^  I  saw  the  little  that 
is  Good  steadily  hastening  towards  immortality. 

And  the  vast  all  that  is  call'd  Evil  I  saw  hastening  to  merge 
itself  and  become  lost  and  dead.^ 

And  again: 

The  whole  universe  indicates  that  it  is  good. 
The  past  and  the  present  indicate  that  it  is  good. 
How  beautiful  and  perfect  are  the  animals ! 
How  perfect  the  earth,  and  the  minutest  thing  upon  it ! 
What  is  called  good  is  perfect,  and  what  is  called  bad  is 
just  as  perfect.^ 

In  this  broad  earth  of  ours. 
Amid  the  measureless  grossness  and  the  slag. 
Enclosed  and  safe  within  its  central  heart. 
Nestles  the  seed  perfection.^ 

For  I  do  not  see  one  imperfection  in  the  universe. 
And  I  do  not  see  one  cause  or  result  lamentable  at  last  in 
the  universe.* 

For  him 

All  the  things  of  the  universe  are  perfect  miracles,  each  as 
profound  as  any.^ 

His    inspired    child-soul    sees    nought    save 
miracles : 

To  me  the  sea  is  a  continual  miracle, 

The  fishes  that  swim — the  rocks — the  motion  of  the  waves — 

the  ships  with  men  in  them. 
What  stranger  miracles  are  there  ?  ^ 

^  Vol.  II,  p.  35.  ■•  Vol.  II,  p.  280. 

'Vol.  II,  pp.  219-20.  ^Vol.  I,  p.  25. 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  276.  •  Vol.  II,  p.  164. 


138  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Even  the  tiniest  things  are  miraculous: 

I  believe  a  leaf  of  grass  is  no  less  than  the  journey-work 

of  the  stars  .  .   . 
And  a  mouse  is  miracle  enough  to  stagger  sextillions  of 

infidels.^ 

Behold  this  compost !  behold  it  well ! 

Perhaps  every  mite  has  once  formed  part  of  a  sick  person — 

yet  behold ! 
The  grass  of  spring  covers  the  prairies, 
The    bean    bursts    noiselessly   through    the    mould    in    the 

garden. 
The  delicate  spear  of  the  onion  pierces  upward.^ 

Now  I  am  terrified  at  the  Earth,  it  is  that  calm  and  patient. 

It  grows  such  sweet  things  out  of  such  corruptions. 

It  turns  harmless  and  stainless  on  its  axis,  with  such  endless 

successions  of  diseas'd  corpses, 
It  distills  such  exquisite  winds  out  of  such  infused  fetor. 
It  renews  with  such  unwitting  looks  its  prodigal,  annual, 

sumptuous  crops, 
It  gives   such  divine  materials  to  men,  and  accepts  such 

leavings  from  them  at  last.^ 

Thus  Whitman's  soul  is  almost  always  joyous. 
At  certain  moments  his  physical  and  spiritual 
delight  in  the  spectacle  of  the  world  transports 
him  into  a  well-nigh  Dionysiac  frenzy.  Read, 
for  instance,  the  Song  of  Joys,  wherein  all  joys 
from  that  of  "bathing  in  the  swimming  bath" 
to  the  "prophetic  joys  of  better"  are  enumerated 
and  invoked. 

»Vol.  I,  pp.  70-71.      'Vol,  II,  pp.  140-41,        'Vol.  II,  p.  142. 


WALT  WHITMAN  139 

But  the  greatest  of  all  joys  for  Whitman  is 
the  joy  of  being  loved,  in  body  and  in  spirit: 

I  know  .  .  . 

That  all  the  men  ever  born  are  also  my  brothers,  and  the 

women  my  sisters  and  lovers. 
And  that  a  kelson  of  the  creation  is  love.^ 

After  studying  all  philosophers  and  all  proph- 
ets he  discovers  that  the  basis  of  all  metaphysics 
is  love: 

The  dear  love  of  man  for  his  comrade,  the  attraction  of 

friend  to  friend. 
Of  the   well-married  husband  and   wife,  of  children  and 

parents. 
Of  city  for  city  and  land  for  land.^ 

He  thinks  of  all  the  men  scattered  in  far  away 
lands  whom  he  might  love: 

And  it  seems  to  me  if  I  could  know  those  men  I  should 
become  attached  to  them  as  I  do  to  men  in  my  own 
lands, 

0  I  know  we  should  be  brethren  and  lovers, 

1  know  I  should  be  happy  with  them.^ 

But  Whitman's  song  would  not  be  truly  uni- 
versal if  he  saw  only  the  beauty  and  the  goodness 
of  the  world.  I  have  already  said,  I  believe,  that 
his  optimism  is  by  no  means  that  of  Dr.  Pangloss. 
He  is  not  unaware  of  evil;  he  transcends  it. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  he  cannot  rise  above  it  in  full 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  38.  '  Vol.  I,  p.  147.  '  Vol.  I,  p.  154. 


140  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

serenity.  A  sudden  thought  assails  him,  and  his 
words  are  full  of  sadness,  wet  with  tears,  resonant 
with  the  echoes  of  funeral  bells  and  drums: 

I  do  not  snivel  that  snivel  the  world  over. 

That  months  are  vacuums  and  the  ground  but  wallow  and 

filth. 
Whimpering  and  truckling  fold  with  powders  for  invalids,^ 

conformity  goes  to  the  fourth-remov'd, 
I  wear  my  hat  as  I  please  indoors  or  out.^ 

Henceforth  I  whimper  no  more,  postpone  no  more,  need 

nothing, 
Done  with  indoor  complaints,  libraries,  querulous  criticisms. 
Strong  and  content  I  travel  the  open  road.^ 

But  for  him  too  come  days  of  sadness: 

I  sit  and  look  out  upon  all  the  sorrows  of  the  world,  and 

•upon  all  oppression  and  shame  .  .  . 
All  these — all  the  meanness  and  agony  without  end  I  sitting 

look  out  upon. 
See,  hear,  and  am  silent.^ 

And  when  he  contemplates  the  faces  of  those 
who  sleep,  he  sees  not  only  those  of  the  happy, 
but 

The  wretched  features  of  ennuyes,  the  white  features  of 
corpses,  the  livid  faces  of  drunkards,  the  sick-gray 
faces  of  onanists. 

The  gash'd  bodies  on  battle-fields,  the  insane  in  their  strong- 
door'd  rooms,  the  sacred  idiots,  the  new-born  emerging 
from  gates,  and  the  dying  emerging  from  gates.* 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  56.  *  Vol.  II,  p.  34. 

'Vol.  I,  p.  177.  *Vol.  II,  p.  201. 


WALT  WHITMAN  141 

In  the  midst  of  the  tempest  it  seems  to  him 
that  tears  are  raining  on  the  earth : 

O  then  the  unloosen 'd  ocean. 
Of  tears !  tears !  tears !  ^ 

He  feels  the  horror 

Of  the  terrible  doubt  of  appearances. 

Of  the  uncertainty  after  all,  that  we  may  be  deluded. 

That  may-be  reliance  and  hope  are  but  speculations  after 

all. 
That  may-be  identity  beyond  the  grave  is  a  beautiful  fable 

only.2 

And  he  asks,  sadly: 

Hast  never  come  to  thee  an  hour, 

A  sudden   gleam   divine,  precipitating,  bursting  all  these 

bubbles,  fashions,  wealth? 
These  eager  business  aims — books,  politics,  art,  amours. 
To  utter  nothingness  ?  ^ 

The  thought  of  death,  especially   in   his   last 
years,  leads  him  to  bitter  reflections : 

To  think  how  eager  we  are  in  building  our  houses. 

To   think    others    shall    be   just   as    eager,   and    we    quite 

indifferent  .  .  . 
Slow-moving  and  black  lines  creep  over  the  whole  earth — 

they  never  cease — they  are  the  burial  lines, 
He  that  was   President  was   buried,  and  he  that  is   now 

President  shall  surely  be  buried.* 

What  matters  it?    Perhaps  death  is  but  ap- 
parent : 

»  Vol.  II,  p.  18.  >  Vol.  II,  p.  38. 

»  Vol.  I,  p.  145.  *  Vol.  II,  pp.  214-15. 


142  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Pensive  and  faltering. 
The  words  the  Dead  I  write. 
For  living  are  the  Dead, 
(Haply  the  only  living,  only  real, 
And  I  the  apparition,  I  the  spectre).^ 

For  the  death  of  Lincoln  he  expands  magnifi- 
cently St.  Francis'  praise  of  Sister  Death: 

Dark  mother  always  gliding  near  with  soft  feet. 

Have  none  chanted  for  thee  a  chant  of  fullest  welcome? 

Then  I  chant  it  for  thee,  I  glorify  thee  above  all, 

I  bring  thee  a  song  that  when  thou  must  indeed  come^  come 

unfalteringly. 
Approach  strong  deliveress, 
When  it  is  so,  when  thou  hast  taken  them  I  joyously  sing 

the  dead. 
Lost  in  the  loving  floating  ocean  of  thee, 
Laved  in  the  flood  of  thy  bliss  O  death.^ 

And  he  goes  on  to  promise  festivals  and  ser- 
enades as  to  one  beloved. 


Ill 


But  Whitman  would  not  be  the  universal  man 
if  the  thought  of  death  held  him  continually.  To 
be  complete  he  must  be  at  the  same  time  as  full 
of  laughter  as  a  child,  as  melancholy  as  an  old 
man,  as  humble  as  St.  Francis,  and  as  valiant 
as  Nietzsche.  No  one,  I  hope,  will  be  surprised 
at  the  appearance  of  this  name  here.     Since  I 

'  Vol.  II,  p.  234.  » Vol.  II,  pp.  101-2. 


WALT  WHITMAN  143 

know  Whitman  better  than  I  know  what  has 
been  written  about  him,  I  cannot  say  whether 
the  relationship  between  Whitman  and  Nietzsche 
has  been  pointed  out.  In  any  case,  students 
of  Nietzsche  should  take  care  to  include  Whit- 
man in  the  long  roll  of  the  precursors  of  their 
philosopher/  From  the  Leaves  of  Grass  one 
could  easily  make  a  little  Nietzschean  chres- 
tomathy  in  which  even  the  favorite  expressions 
of  the  prophet  of  Zarathustra  would  appear. 

In  the  very  first  strophe  of  the  Song  of  My- 
self Whitman  says: 

I  harbor  for  good  or  bad,  I  permit  to  speak  at  every  hazard, 
Nature  without  check  with  original  energy.^ 

I  am  not  the  poet  of  goodness  only,  I  do  not  decline  to  be 

the  poet  of  wickedness  also. 
What  blurt  is  this  about  virtue  and  about  vice? 
Evil  propels  me  and  reform  of  evil  propels  me,  I  stand 

indifferent. 
My  gait  is  no  fault-finder's  or  rejecter's  gait, 
I  moisten  the  roots  of  all  that  has  grown.^ 

O  quick  mettle,  rich  blood,  impulse  and  love !  good  and  evil ! 
O  all  dear  to  me !  * 

And  he  imagines  thus  the  life  of  himself  and 
his  friends: 

Arm'd  and  fearless,  eating,  drinking,  sleeping,  loving. 
No  law  less  than  ourselves  owning,  sailing,  soldiering,  thiev- 
ing, threatening, 

*  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  first  edition  of  the  Leaves  of 
Grass  appeared  in  1855. 

^  Vol.  I,  p.  33.  =>  Vol.  I,  p.  60.  '  Vol.  II,  p.  254. 


144  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Misers^  menials,  priests  alarming,  air  breathing,  water 
drinking,  on  the  turf  or  the  sea-beach  dancing. 

Cities  wrenching,  ease  scorning,  statutes  mocking,  feeble- 
ness chasing, 

Fulfilling  our  foray .^ 

In  the  Song  of  Joys  he  exclaims: 

O  something  pernicious  and  dread ! 

Something  far  away  from  a  puny  and  pious  life !  .  .  . 

To  see  men  fall  and  die  and  not  complain ! 

To  taste  the  savage  taste  of  blood — to  be  so  devilish ! 

To  gloat  so  over  the  wounds  and  deaths  of  the  enemy.^ 

O  while  I  live  to  be  the  ruler  of  life,  not  a  slave, 
To  meet  life  as  a  powerful  conqueror.^ 

Piety  and  conformity  to  them  that  like. 
Peace,  obesity,  allegiance,  to  them  that  like.* 

He  would  sing  "the  songs  of  the  body  and  of 
the  truths  of  the  earth."  ^  He  feels  all  the  un- 
realized greatness  of  the  earth,^  and  to  the  earth 
addresses  a  song  which  has  the  solemnity  of  a 
Vedic  hymn: 

O  vast  Rondure,  swimming  in  space, 
Cover'd  all  over  with  visible  power  and  beauty. 
Alternate  light  and  day  and  the  teeming  spiritual  darkness, 
Unspeakable  high  processions  of  sun  and  moon  and  count- 
less stars  above. 
Below,  the  manifold  grass  and  waters,  animals,  mountains, 

trees. 
With  inscrutable  purpose,  some  hidden  prophetic  intention/ 

» Vol.  I,  p.  156.  » Vol.  I,  p.  273. 

^  Vol.  I,  pp.  216-17.  "Vol.  I,  p.  191. 

=  VoI.  I,  p.  220.  'Vol.  II,  pp.  189-90. 

*Vol.  II,  p.  109. 


WALT  WHITMAN  145 

Not  only  does  he,  before  Nietzsche,  possess  this 
sense  of  the  virtue  of  the  earth,  but  he  has,  as 
well,  the  expectation  of  a  superior  race  of  men. 
To  the  men  of  his  day  he  says: 

For-man  of  you,  your  characteristic  race. 

Here  may  he  hardy,  sweet,  gigantic  grow,  here  tower  pro- 
portionate to  Nature, 

Here  climb  the  vast  pure  spaces  unconfined,  uncheck'd  by 
wall  or  roof, 

Here  laugh  with  storm  or  sun,  here  joy,  here  patiently 
inure. 

Here  heed  himself.^ 

And  to  the  mystic  trumpeter  he  cries : 

Marches   of  victory — man   disenthral'd — the  conqueror   at 

last. 
Hymns  to  the  universal  God  from  universal  man — all  joy! 
A  reborn  race  appears — a  perfect  world,  all  joy !  ^ 

These  moments  of  Dionysiac  frenzy,  in  which 
Whitman  is  seized  by  the  rapture  of  joy,  are  not 
rare  in  his  songs.  "I  am  one  who  ever  laughs," 
he  says.  Not  only  does  he  laugh;  he  goes  mad 
with  joy.     One  of  his  ecstasies  ends  thus: 

O  something  unprov'd !  something  in  a  trance ! 

To  escape  utterly  from  others'  anchors  and  holds ! 

To  drive  free !  to  love  free !  to  dash  reckless  and  dangerous ! 

To  court  destruction  with  taunts,  with  invitations ! 

To  ascend,  to  leap  to  the  heavens  of  the  love  indicated 

to  me! 
To  rise  thither  with  my  inebriate  soul ! 
To  be  lost  if  it  must  be  so ! 

»Vol.  I,  p.  254.  "Vol.  II,  p.  252. 


146   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

To  feed  the  remainder  of  life  with  one  hour  of  fulness  and 

freedom ! 
With  one  brief  hour  of  madness  and  joy.^ 

O  to  have  life  henceforth  a  poem  of  new  joys ! 

To   dance,   clap    hands,   exult,    shout,    skip,   leap,   roll   on, 

float  on ! 
To  be  a  sailor  of  the  world  bound  for  all  ports, 
A  ship  itself  .  .  . 
A  swift  and  swelling  ship  full  of  rich  words,  full  of  joys.^ 

Elsewhere  the  hymn  rises  still  more  raptur- 
ously, and  ends  in  a  way  that  reminds  one  of  the 
beginning  of  Pascal's  Priere  de  Jesus: 

Women  and  men  in  wisdom  innocence  and  health — all  joy! 

Riotous  laughing  bacchanals  fill'd  with  joy! 

War,    sorrow,    suffering   gone — the    rank    earth    purged — ' 

nothing  but  joy  left! 
The  ocean  fill'd  with  joy — the  atmosphere  all  joy! 
Joy!  joy!  in  freedom,  worship,  love!  joy  in  the  ecstasy 

of  life! 
Enough  to  merely  be !  enough  to  breathe  I 
Joy !  joy !  all  over  joy !  ^ 

In  this  case  the  Dionysiac  and  Nietzschean 
exultation  mingles  with  the  universal  optimism 
of  Whitman,  and  in  a  certain  sense  purifies  it. 
But  the  American  prophet  suggests  the  German 
poet  in  another  respect  also :  in  his  pride.  Whit- 
man loves  to  call  himself  "more  vain  than  mod- 
est," and  reveals  himself  "proud  of  his  pride" — 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  130.  » Vol.  I,  p.  222. 

•  Vol.  II,  pp.  252-53.  In  the  comparison  with  Nietzsche,  their 
common  love  for  the  South  should  be  noted.  See  Whitman's 
O  Magnet-South. 


WALT  WHITMAN  147 

he  comes  even  to  the  Lucifer-hke  conception  of 
beheving  that  he  includes  God. 

But  Walt  Whitman  is  no  man  of  a  single  as- 
pect. He  is  a  Janus  of  many  faces,  gathering 
in  himself,  like  humanity,  all  possible  characters 
and  all  possible  sentiments.  The  Leaves  of 
Grass,  indeed,  are  not  without  instances  of  hu- 
mility : 

What  am  I  after  all  but  a  child,  pleas'd  with  the  sound  of 
my  own  name?  repeating  it  over  and  over.^ 

What  do  I  know  of  life?  what  of  myself? 
I  know  not  even  my  own  work  past  or  present. 
Dim  ever-shifting  guesses  of  it  spread  before  me, 
Of  newer  better  worlds,  their  mighty  parturition. 
Mocking,  perplexing  me.^ 

Extending  his  own  humility  to  all  mankind, 
he  asks: 

Men  and  women  crowding  fast  in  the  streets,  if  they  are  not 
flashes  and  specks  what  are  they  ?  ^ 

There  is  in  Whitman  something  of  a  Prome- 
theus and  something  of  a  Job ;  and  if  in  some  re- 
spects he  may  be  called  a  precursor  of  Nietzsche, 
he  may  with  equal  propriety  be  classed  on  other 
grounds  as  a  precursor  of  Dostoevsky  and  of 
Tolstoi.  He  never  knew,  probably,  the  "re- 
ligion of  human  suffering,"  but  his  great  soul 
always  felt  a  profound  sympathy  for  the  hum- 

»Vol.  II,  p.  166.  'Vol.  II,  p.  200.  'Vol.  II,  p.  137. 


148  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

blest  members  of  society,  the  poor,  the  slaves, 
even  the  delinquent  and  the  fallen.  Amid  the 
evils  that  silence  him  he  numbers 

The  slights  and  degradations  cast  by  arrogant  persons  upon 
laborers,  the  poor,  and  upon  negroes,  and  the  like.^ 

To  his  banquet  he  invites  all  men: 

I  will  not  have  a  single  person  slighted  or  left  away. 
The  kept-woman,  sponger,  thief,  are  hereby  invited. 
The  heavy-lipp'd  slave  is  invited,  the  venerealee  is  invited; 
There  shall  be  no  difference  between  them  and  the  rest.^ 

As  friend  he  seeks  a  humble  man : 

He  shall  be  lawless,  rude,  illiterate,  he  shall  be  one  con- 
demn'd  by  others  for  deeds  done.^ 

In  Tolstoi  this  attitude  is  a  pose;  but  not  in 
Whitman,  for  Whitman  feels  that  he,  like  his 
humble  friends,  is  stained  with  sin: 

Beneath  this   face  that  appears  so  impassive  hell's  tides 

continually  run, 
Lusts  and  wickedness  are  acceptable  to  me, 
I  walk  with  delinquents  with  passionate  love, 
I    feel    I    am   of    them — I    belong   to   those   convicts    and 

prostitutes  myself. 
And  henceforth  I  will  not  deny  them — for  how  can  I  deny 

myself  ?  * 

He  is  not  ashamed  to  turn  even  to  a  woman  of 
the  streets  with  that  poetic  generosity  which  puri- 
fies all  things: 

Not  till  the  sun  excludes  you  do  I  exclude  you, 
Not  till  the  waters  refuse  to  glisten  for  you  and  the  leaves 

'  Vol.  II,  p.  34.  »  Vol.  I,  p.  134. 

»  Vol.  I,  p.  55.  *  Vol.  II,  p.  160. 


WALT  WHITMAN  149 

to  rustle  for  you^  do  my  words  refuse  to  glisten  and 
rustle  for  you.^ 

Unashamed,  Whitman  will  celebrate  the  body, 
for 

If  any  thing  is  sacred  the  human  body  is  sacred.^ 

And  with  equal  frankness  he  will  describe  and 
celebrate  love: 

No  other  words  but  words  of  love,  no  other  thought  but 
love.' 

Not  love  as  the  hypocrites  of  literature  under- 
stand it — not  platonism  paralleled  by  secret  lust 
— but  love  as  healthy  human  beings  understand 
it,  love  born  of  body  and  soul  alike,  composed 
of  physical  action,  touch,  and  pressure,  ennobled 
by  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  and  by  the  divine 
thought  of  the  generations  that  are  to  spring 
from  one  embrace.  He  has  then  no  cause  for 
shame  that  he  loves  the  body  as  well  as  the  soul : 

There  is  something  in  staying  close  to  men  and  women  and 
looking  on  them,  and  in  the  contact  and  odor  of  them, 
that  pleases  the  soul  well.* 

Nothing  shall  be  hidden :  the  whole  body  shall 
be  sung.  His  voice,  at  least,  will  sing  "the  song 
of  procreation."  ^  But  it  is  creative  love  that 
he  sings,  not  lust : 

»Vol.  II,  p.  161.  »Vol.  II,  p.  251. 

'Vol.  I,  p.  123.  "Vol.  I,  p.  117. 

•Vol.  I,  p.  111.    Compare  pp.  117-18  and  124-26. 


150  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

This  is  not  only  one  man,  this  the  father  of  those  who  shall 

be  fathers  in  their  turns, 
In  him  the  start  of  populous  states  and  rich  republics. 
Of  him  countless  immortal  lives  with  countless  embodiments 

and  enjoyments.^ 

Since  Whitman  feels  that  he  is  as  vast  as  na- 
ture, he  rejects  nothing  of  what  he  finds  in  na- 
ture, but  seeks  merely  to  transform  it.  At  heart 
he  would  like  to  be  as  natural  as  trees  and  beasts.^ 
Nor  was  he  ever  again  so  happy  as  on 

The  day  when  I  rose  at  dawn  from  the  bed  of  perfect 
health,  refresh'd,  singing,  inhaling  the  ripe  breath  of 
autumn.' 

But  he  always  aspires,  through  the  body,  to 
the  life  of  the  soul: 

And  I  will  not  make  a  poem  nor  the  least  part  of  a  poem 
but  has  reference  to  the  soul, 

Because  having  look'd  at  the  objects  of  the  universe,  I  find 
there  is  no  one  nor  any  particle  of  one  but  has  refer- 
ence to  the  soul.^ 

And  when  he  would  rise  above  the  world  and 
escape  from  things,  he  sends  to  the  soul  this  lyric 
summons : 

Come,  let  us  lag  here  no  longer,  let  us  be  up  and  away! 
O  if  one  could  but  fly  like  a  bird ! 
O  to  escape,  to  sail  forth  as  in  a  ship ! 

To  glide  with  thee  O  soul,  o'er  all,  in  all,  as  a  ship  o'er  the 
waters.^ 

»Vol.  I,  p.  121.  *Vol.  I,  p.  26. 

*Vol.  I,  pp.  12,  213.  •Vol.  II,  p.  153. 

» Vol.  I,  p.  148. 


WALT  WHITMAN  151 

How  then  explain  the  fact  that  Whitman  so 
constantly  deals  with  the  body?  Here  too  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  one  of  those  contradic- 
tions, or  rather,  unifications,  which  make  him  in 
a  certain  sense  a  Hegelian  poet.  He  sings  of  the 
body  when  he  means  to  sing  of  the  soul  simply 
because  the  body,  like  everything  else,  is  funda- 
mentally a  manifestation  of  the  soul: 

I  have  said  that  the  soul  is  not  more  than  the  body, 

And  I  have  said  that  the  body  is  not  more  than  the  soul.^ 

And  he  asks: 

If  the  body  were  not  the  soul,  what  is  the  soul?  ^ 

In  this  way  his  idealism  becomes  concrete,  his 
sensualism  becomes  spiritualized,  and  the  whole 
of  life  appears  as  a  portentous  unity  in  which 
nothing  is  to  be  rejected.  And  as  he  accepts 
life,  so  he  accepts  all  the  occupations  of  life. 
Even  as  he  sings  of  the  blossoms  of  the  lilac,  of 
the  broad,  cool  sea  that  caresses  him,  of  the 
sonorous  rumblings  of  the  drum,  so  he  does  not 
disdain  to  sing  of  the  rough  locomotive  ^  or  to 
set  forth  the  miracles  of  industry  in  his  Song  of 
the  Exposition  or  to  write  the  Song  for  Occupa- 
tions, wherein  no  laborer  is  forgotten.  Does 
he  not  indeed  proclaim,  simply  and  directly:  "I 
sing  the  ordinary"? 

The  one  thing  he  will  not  accept  is  slavery. 

*Vol.  I,  p.  105.  =Vol.  II,  p.  253. 

"Vol.  I,  p.  114.    Compare  also  pp.  122-24. 


152  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

He  never  forgets  that  he  is  the  poet  of  free 
America  and  of  democracy;  he  encourages 
thwarted  revolutionists  with  his  hymns  of  hope. 
He  even  disregards  his  pulsing  naturalistic  in- 
spiration that  he  may  set  forth  a  sort  of  demo- 
cratic mythology.^  But  beneath  the  rhetorical 
and  possibly  ridiculous  elements  in  this  Prome- 
thean and  Garibaldian  phase  of  his  poetry,  there 
is  a  noble  basis  of  natural  generosity,  of  love  for 
liberty,  and  of  broad  sympathy  for  those  who 
cannot  live  as  they  desire  to  live. 

He  too,  like  all  towering    spirits,    lived    and 
moved  in  the  pursuit  of  liberty: 

From    this    hour    I    ordain    myself    loos'd    of    limits    and 

imaginary  lines, 
Going  where  I  list,  my  own  master  total  and  absolute, 
Listening  to  others,  considering  well  what  they  say. 
Pausing,  searching,  receiving,  contemplating. 
Gently,  but  with  undeniable  will,  divesting  myself  of  the 

holds  that  would  hold  me.^ 

And  he  encourages  rebellion  in  others  also.   So 
he  writes.  To  a  FoiVd  European  Revolutionaire: 

Not  songs  of  loyalty  alone  are  these. 
But  songs  of  insurrection  also.^ 

And  he  is 

Lifted  now  and  always  against  whoever  scorning  assumes 
to  rule  me.* 

» Vol.  II,  pp.  237ff.  »  Vol.  II,  p.  143. 

^Vol.  I,  p.  180.  «Vol.  II,  p.  224. 


WALT  WHITMAN  153 

Though  a  sincere  believer  in  democracy,  he 
has  httle  sympathy  for  rules  and  laws.  If  all 
men  were  like  unto  himself,  he  would  frankly 
favor  anarchy.  His  ideal  city  would  have 
neither  rules  nor  officials.^    And  it  exists  already 

Where  the  men  and  women  think  lightly  of  the  laws.^ 
Again,  he  says: 

I  am  for  those  that  have  never  been  master'd, 

For    men    and    women    whose    tempers    have    never    been 

master'd, 
For   those   whom    laws^   theories,   conventions,    can   never 

master.^ 


IV 


In  Walt  Whitman  the  age-long  opposition  be- 
tween flesh  and  spirit  disappears.  There  are 
those  who  live  solely  for  the  flesh:  they  are  pa- 
gans, in  the  bad  sense  of  the  word.  There  are 
those  who  subject  the  soul  to  the  uses  of  the  flesh: 
they  are  the  refined  pagans,  the  skeptics,  the  ele- 
gant Mephistophelians.  There  are  those  who 
live  for  the  spirit  alone,  and  mortify  the  body: 
they  are  the  ascetics,  reproved  by  Christ  as  well 
as  by  the  ordinary  man.  And  there  are  those 
who  respect  the  body  and  train  it  for  the  service 
of  the  soul.     Such  is  Walt  Whitman. 

Can  it  be  truly  said  that  he  sings  of  the  body 

» Vol.  I,  p.  154.  '  Vol.  I,  p.  229.  =■  Vol.  II,  p.  123. 


154  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

for  the  sake  of  the  body,  that  he  sings  of  love 
for  the  sake  of  love?  No.  He  sings  of  the  body 
and  the  soul :  the  soul  through  the  body ;  the  body 
as  the  provisional  vestment  of  the  soul.  And 
when  he  sings  of  love,  even  of  ardent  passion, 
though  his  thought  may  turn,  Hke  that  of  any 
Latin,  to  the  intensity  of  a  moment's  joy,  he 
thinks  of  the  man  as  husband  and  father,  and  of 
the  woman  as  wife  and  mother.  And  in  the 
background  of  the  future  he  sees  the  numberless 
generations  of  their  progeny. 

There  are  those — and  Catholicism  has  known 
many  of  them — who  refrain  from  bodily  sin,  but 
are  tempted  and  tormented  and  yield  to  sin 
within  the  life  of  thought.  They  are  pure  in  the 
flesh  and  impure  in  the  spirit.  They  defile  the 
life  of  the  spirit.  There  are  others,  like  Whit- 
man, who  Hve  fully  and  healthily  the  life  of  the 
body  without  pretense  and  without  asceticism, 
and  thus  succeed  in  giving  a  spiritual  quality 
even  to  bodily  life.  Such  men  are  far  nobler 
than  the  others.  I  would  set  the  life  of  the  spirit 
before  all  else;  but  for  this  very  reason  I  would 
not  have  that  life  too  full  of  scruples,  of  fears,  of 
subterfuges,  with  regard  to  the  life  of  the  body. 
The  life  of  the  body  is  secondary ;  it  must  be  puri- 
fied by  a  purpose  which  is  not  corporeal.  But  it 
cannot  be  annihilated,  and  in  consequence  it  must 
not  be  cursed  and  it  must  not  be  hidden.  Walt 
Whitman  was  the  first  man  who  had  the  daring 


WALT  WHITMAN  155 

to  seem  for  moral  purposes  to  be  immoral,  to 
seem  pornographic  for  pure  ends.  The  more 
honor  to  him  that  he  had  no  fear  of  staining  him- 
self even  when  he  accej)ted  that  which  small 
minds  call  indecent! 

Whitman  has  been  accused  not  only  of  im- 
morality and  of  materialism,  but  of  irreligion. 
He  is  certainly  not  an  adherent  of  any  specific 
religion.  In  all  matters  his  point  of  view  is  uni- 
versal. Humanity,  taken  as  a  whole,  has  no  one 
single  faith.  Whitman,  representing  all  hu- 
manity in  himself,  accepts  all  human  faiths,  does 
not  admit  that  any  one  is  truer  than  the  others: 

Believing   I   shall   come   again   upon  the   earth   after   five 

thousand  years. 
Waiting  responses  from  oracles,  honoring  the  gods,  saluting 

the  sun. 
Making  a  fetich  of  the  first  rock  or  stump,  powowing  with 

sticks  in  the  circle  of  obis. 
Helping  the  llama  or  brahmin  as  he  trims  the  lamps  of  the 

idols. 
Dancing  yet  through  the  streets  in  a  phallic  procession,  rapt 

and  austere  in  the  woods  a  gymnosophist. 
Drinking  mead  from  the  skull-cup,  to  Shastas  and  Vedas 

admirant,  minding  the  Koran, 
Walking  the  teokallis,  spotted  with  gore  from  the  stone  and 

knife,  beating  the  serpent-skin  drum. 
Accepting  the  Gospels,  accepting  him  that  was  crucified, 

knowing  assuredly  that  he  is  divine. 
To  the  mass  kneeling  or  the  puritan's  prayer  rising,  or 

sitting  patiently  in  a  pew.^ 
*  Vol.  I,  p.  95. 


156   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

And  this  is  not  eclecticism:  it  is  universalism, 
a  complete  acceptance  of  the  religious  experi- 
ence, whatever  its  form.  For  Walt  Whitman 
feels  the  need  of  religion,  and  asserts  that  he 
comes  to  bring  us  a  religion: 

I  too,  following  many  and  follow'd  by  many,  inaugurate  a 

religion,  I  descend  into  the  arena  .  .  . 
I  say  the  whole  earth  and  all  the  stars  in  the  sky  are  for 

religion's  sake. 
I  say  no  man  has  ever  yet  been  half  devout  enough. 
None  has  ever  yet  adored  or  worship'd  half  enough  .  .  . 
I  say  that  the  real  and  permanent  grandeur  of  these  States 

must  be  their  religion  .   .  . 
For  not  all  matter  is  fuel  to  heat,  impalpable  to  flame,  the 

essential  life  of  the  earth. 
Any  more  than  such  are  to  religion.^ 

But  what  is  the  essence  of  Whitman's  religion? 
In  one  of  his  songs  he  confesses  the  gods  of  his 
behef :  the  ideal  man,  death,  the  soul,  time,  space.^ 
Yet  his  polytheism  is  only  apparent :  his  mind  is 
unitarian.  All  things  are  one:  this  unity  may 
be  called  soul,  it  may  be  called  Walt  Whitman, 
but  it  may  better  be  called  God.  God  is  all  and 
is  everywhere: 

I  see  something  of  God  each  hour  of  the  twenty-four,  and 

each  moment  then. 
In  the  faces  of  men  and  women  I  see  God,  and  in  my  own 

face  in  the  glass, 
I  find  letters  from  God  dropt  in  the  street,  and  every  one 

is  sign'd  by  God's  name, 
» Vol.  I,  pp.  21-22.  »  Vol.  II,  pp.  30-31. 


WALT  WHITMAN  157 

And  I  leave  them  where  they  are,  for  I  know  that  where- 

soe'er  I  go^ 
Others  will  punctually  come  for  ever  and  ever.^ 

When  he  thinks  of  immortality,  he,  the  proud 
in  spirit,  prays: 

Give  me  O  God  to  sing  that  thought. 

Give  me,  give  him  or  her  I  love  this  quenchless  faith. 

In    Thy   ensemble,   whatever   else    withheld    withhold   not 

from  us. 
Belief  in  plan  of  Thee  enclosed  in  Time  and  Space, 
Health,  peace,  salvation  universal.' 

Like  the  mystics,  he  aspires  to  union  with  God: 

Bathe  me  O  God  in  thee,  mounting  to  thee, 
I  and  my  soul  to  range  in  range  of  thee.^ 

And  the  hymn  to  divinity  bursts  forth  thus 
from  the  love  of  his  soul: 

0  Thou  transcendent. 
Nameless,  the  fibre  and  the  breath. 

Light  of  the  light,  shedding  forth  universes,  thou  centre 

of  them, 
Thou  mightier  centre  of  the  true,  the  good,  the  loving. 
Thou    moral,    spiritual    fountain — affection's    source,    thou 

reservoir  .  .  . 
Thou  pulse — thou  motive  of  the  stars,  suns,  systems. 
That,  circling,  move  in  order,  safe,  harmonious. 
Athwart  the  shapeless  vastnesses  of  space. 
How  should  I  think,  how  breathe  a  single  breath,  how  speak, 

if,  out  of  myself, 

1  could  not  laimch,  to  those,  superior  universes  ?  * 

»Vol.  I,  p.  106.  =Vol.  II,  p.  194. 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  278.  "  Vol.  II,  p.  195. 


158   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

As  this  poem  shows,  he  is  a  sort  of  paradoxical 
personal  pantheist,  or  Christian  pantheist.  The 
soul  of  Christ,  more  than  that  of  any  other  re- 
vealer  of  the  divine,  is  to  him  a  sister  soul.  At 
daybreak  on  a  battlefield  he  sees  three  wounded 
men  asleep,  and  suddenly  one  of  them  seems  to 
him  to  be  Christ : 

Young  man  I  think  I  know  you — I  think  this  face  is  the 

face  of  the  Christ  himself. 
Dead  and  divine  and  brother  of  all,  and  here  again  he  lies.^ 

And  as  he  had  felt  himself  like  unto  God,  so 
he  feels  like  unto  Christ.  The  same  accusations 
had  been  brought  against  them  both: 

I  hear  it  was  charged  against  me  that  I  sought  to  destroy 

institutions, 
But  really  I  am  neither  for  nor  against  institutions.^ 

He  seeks  only  to  found  the  city  of  love;  and 
his  resolute  purpose  gives  him  the  right  to  believe 
himself  more  truly  Christian  than  those  who  bear 
that  name  merely  as  a  sign  of  cold  devotion.  He 
speaks  thus  To  Him  that  was  Crucified: 

My  spirit  to  yours  dear  brother. 

Do  not  mind  because   many   sounding  your   name   do   not 

understand  you, 
I  do  not  sound  your  name,  but  I  understand  you  .   .  . 
That  we  all  labor  together  transmitting  the  same  charge 

and  succession  .  .  . 
Compassionaters,  perceivers,  rapport  of  men.  .  .  . 

'  Vol.  II,  p.  71.  '  Vol.  I,  p.  154. 


WALT  WHITMAN  159 

Yet  we  walk  unheld^  free,  the  whole  earth  over,  journeying 

up  and  down  till  we  make  our  ineffaceable  mark  upon 

time  and  the  diverse  eras. 
Till  we  saturate  time  and  eras,  that  the  men  and  women  of 

races,  ages  to  come,  may  prove  brethren  and  lovers  as 

we  are.^ 

His  pity  for  those  who  have  sinned,  his  love 
for  all  men,  even  the  humblest  and  most  despised 
of  men,  his  Franciscan  praise  of  death — all  these 
are  truly  Christian  sentiments.  And  though 
Walt  Whitman  was  never  enrolled  among  the 
members  of  any  church,  we  may  count  him  with- 
out hesitation  among  the  disciples  and  the  fol- 
lowers of  Christ. 

Even  less  can  one  question  the  depth  of  his 
religious  understanding.  He  believed  not  only 
in  bodies,  but  in 

Identities  now  doubtless  near  us  in  the  air  that  we  know 
not  of.^ 

He  believed  firmly  in  the  future  life.  He 
maintained  that  the  body  cannot  die,^  and  that 
no  one  can  ever  suffer  annihilation: 

Have  you  guess'd  you  yourself  would  not  continue? 

Have  you  dreaded  these  earth-beetles  ? 

Have  you  fear'd  the  future  would  be  nothing  to  you? 

Is  today  nothing?  is  the  beginningless  past  nothing? 

If  the  future  is  nothing  they  are  just  as  surely  nothing.* 

'  Vol.  II,  p.  159.  "  Vol.  I,  p.  26. 

'  Vol.  I,  p.  23.  *  Vol.  II,  p.  213. 


160  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

He  is  certain  that  everything  has  an  immortal 
soul : 

I  swear  I  think  there  is  nothing  but  immortality !  ^ 

Filled  with  hope,  he  has  no  fear  of  the  future, 
and  seeks  to  go  beyond  the  things  of  common 
life,  beyond  cowardly  immobility: 

Away  O  soul !  hoist  instantly  the  anchor ! 

Cut  the  hawsers — haul  out — shake  out  every  sail ! 

Have   we  not   stood   here   like   trees   in   the   ground  long 

enough  ? 
Have  we  not  grovel'd  here  long  enough,  eating  and  drinking 

like  mere  brutes? 
Have  we  not  darken'd  and  dazed  ourselves  with  books  long 

enough  ? 
Sail  forth — steer  for  the  deep  waters  only, 
Reckless  O  soul,  exploring,  I  with  thee,  and  thou  with  me. 
For  we  are  bound  where  mariner  has  not  yet  dared  to  go. 
And  we  will  risk  the  ship,  ourselves  and  all. 
O  my  brave  soul ! 
O  farther  farther  sail ! 

O  daring  joy,  but  safe !  are  they  not  all  the  seas  of  God? 
O  farther,  farther,  farther  sail !  ^ 

Who  has  gone  farthest?  for  I  would  go  farther.^ 


And  now,  like  all  good  orators  and  all  good 
essayists,  I  ought  to  gather  the  threads  of  my 
discourse  and  frame  a  summary.      But  this  I 

'  Vol.  II,  p.  220.         '  Vol.  II,  pp.  196-97.         '  Vol.  II,  p.  260. 


WALT  WHITMAN  161 

shall  not  do.  My  love  for  Whitman  is  too  deep. 
His  poetry  is  not  such  that  it  can  be  reduced  to 
a  coherent  system  and  subjected  to  dialectic  criti- 
cism. Whitman's  soul  is  as  vast  as  the  world, 
as  all-enfolding  as  God.  It  includes  everything 
— ^joy  and  grief,  body  and  spirit,  liberty  and 
discipline,  pride  and  humility,  God  and  the  blade 
of  grass.  One  must  accept  it  as  one  accepts  the 
universe,  without  regard  for  the  cleavages  that 
men  have  made  in  the  world. 

But  Whitman's  soul  is  not  merely  a  gigantic 
lake  of  love.  It  is  composed  of  qualities,  senti- 
ments, passions  that  may  inspire  men,  excite 
them  to  action,  to  life,  render  them  saner, 
stronger,  purer,  better.  Men  who  do  not  feel, 
as  they  read  Whitman,  that  the  flame  of  life 
grows  broader  and  shines  more  brilliantly,  as  if 
it  were  carried  into  a  better  air,  who  are  not  con- 
scious of  an  intense  regret  that  it  was  not  for 
them  to  know  and  embrace  the  author  of  certain 
of  these  songs,  who  are  shocked  by  the  coarse- 
ness, the  violence,  the  shamelessness,  the  energy 
of  the  poems,  and  would  have  the  man  calmer 
and  more  refined,  more  prudent  and  less  rough — 
such  men  understand  Whitman  not  at  all,  will 
never  understand  him,  and  are  not  worthy  to 
understand  him. 

Whitman  is  a  good  plebeian  who  sings  un- 
ashamed all  the  things  of  the  world.  And  the 
most  significant  counsel  that  he  gives  us — after 


162  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

the  counsel  that  we  love  one  another — is  that  we 
wash  away  the  literary  rheum  that  fills  our  eyes 
and  keeps  from  us  the  sight  of  things  as  they 
are.  We  Italians — and  not  we  alone — are  too 
literary,  too  polite.  We  are  gentlemen  even  in 
the  presence  of  nature,  which  asks  no  compli- 
ments. We  are  gentlemen  even  within  the  world 
of  poetry,  which  asks  no  elegance.  In  our  dried 
veins — sleek,  feminine,  civilian  dilettantes  that 
we  are — we  need  a  little  of  the  blood  of  peasants, 
of  mountaineers,  of  the  rabble.  It  is  not  enough 
to  "open  our  windows,"  as  Orsini  said.  We 
must  go  forth,  leave  the  city,  feel  things  and  love 
things  immediately,  whether  they  be  fair  or  foul. 
And  we  must  express  our  love  without  respect 
of  persons,  without  sweetish  words,  without 
metrical  hair-splitting,  without  too  much  thought 
of  the  holy  traditions,  the  honorable  conventions, 
and  the  stupid  rules  of  good  society.  If  we  would 
find  again  the  poetry  we  have  lost  we  must  go 
back  a  little  toward  barbarism — even  toward 
savagery. 

If  Walt  Whitman  does  not  teach  us  this  at 
least,  translations  and  interpretations  will  avail 
nothing. 


XI 

CROCE  ^ 

There  are  still  in  Italy  a  number  of  more 
or  less  youthful  men  of  letters,  many  secondary 
professors  in  secondary  schools,  and  a  few 
journalists  with  a  smattering  of  philosophy,  who 
really  attribute  great  importance  to  Benedetto 
Croce  and  his  Esthetics.  That  book,  published 
ten  years  ago,  has  reached  its  fourth  edition, 
and  is  considered,  by  those  to  whom  I  have  re- 
ferred, as  the  unbreakable  table  of  artistic  law, 
as  the  most  refined  and  exquisite  essence  of  Euro- 
pean thought,  as  the  eternal  gospel  of  all  criti- 
cism. In  their  eyes  Croce  is  the  one  licensed 
guide  of  the  present  generation,  the  perpetual 
dictator  of  our  culture,  the  high  and  mighty  mas- 

*  Written  a  propos  of  Croce's  Breviario  di  estetica  ("The  Bre- 
viary of  .Esthetic"),  Bari,  1913. 

The  lectures  composing  this  treatise  were  written  for  the  open- 
ing of  the  Rice  Institute  (October,  1912).  They  appear,  in  an 
English  translation  by  Douglas  Ainslie,  in  The  Book  of  the  Open- 
ing of  The  Rice  Institute,  Vol.  II,  pp.  430-517,  and  in  The  Rice 
Institute  Pamphlet  (December,  1915),  pp.  223-310.  In  the  present 
translation  the  passages  of  Croce's  Italian  text  quoted  by  Papini 
are  replaced  by  the  corresponding  passages  of  Ainslie's  transla- 
tion. The  page  references  in  the  footnotes  are  to  that  translation 
as  it  appears  in  The  Rice  Institute  Pamphlet. 
163 


164  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

ter  of  a  boarding-school  which  all  good  little 
Italians  should  attend. 

In  other  countries  the  revelation  according  to 
Croce  has  aroused  no  such  wonder.  The  Ms- 
thetics  has  been  translated  into  four  or  five 
languages ;  but  we  may  safely  affirm  that  France, 
England,  and  Germany  have  marveled  rather 
at  our  admiration  than  at  the  value  of  Croce's 
theories.  Not  a  single  philosopher  has  accepted 
them,  and  not  one  has  discussed  them  at  length 
save  the  illustrious  Cohen,  who  slashes  them 
through  several  pages  of  his  last  treatise  on 
eesthetics. 

Texas  appears  to  be  the  only  foreign  land 
that  rivals  central  and  southern  Italy  in  their 
incautious  and  prostrate  devotion.  Croce  was 
invited  some  time  ago  to  deliver  at  the  Rice  In- 
stitute, in  Houston,  four  lectures  which  should 
at  last  reveal  the  true  nature  of  art  to  an  anxious 
nation.  He  was  unable,  for  personal  reasons, 
to  undertake  the  long  voyage  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  but  he  sent  over  the  four  lectures  that 
had  been  requested;  and  now,  lest  a  grateful 
fatherland  should  suffer  from  their  loss,  he  has 
printed  them  in  the  original  Italian.  In  this 
Breviary,  he  writes,  "I  have  not  only  condensed 
the  more  important  concepts  of  my  earlier  vol- 
umes on  the  same  subject,  but  have  set  them 
forth  in  better  organization  and  with  greater 
clearness  than  in  my  Esthetics/'    And  he  is  so 


CROCE  165 

well  pleased  with  the  little  book  that  he  hopes 
to  introduce  it  into  the  schools  "as  collateral  read- 
ing for  literary  and  philosophic  studies."  That 
is  a  serious  menace;  and  it  behooves  us  to  stop 
for  a  moment  to  consider  the  real  value  of  the 
aesthetic  system  of  Croce,  which  seems  likely, 
through  newspapers  and  schools,  to  lead  the  mass 
of  our  young  compatriots  astray  for  twenty  years 
to  come. 

The  Breviary  examines  in  turn  the  nature  of 
art,  prejudices  relating  to  art,  the  place  of  art 
in  the  spirit  and  in  human  society,  and,  finally, 
criticism  and  the  history  of  art.  All  the  points 
of  the  system  are  indeed  set  forth  with  greater 
brevity,  if  not  with  greater  clearness,  than  hith- 
erto. Every  difficulty  is  dispelled  in  a  twinkling, 
and  with  the  most  elegant  ease.  Problems  are 
solved  with  that  smile  of  superiority  which  seems 
to  say:  "There;  do  you  mean  to  admit  that  you 
hadn't  realized  a  truth  as  simple  as  this?" 

Here  again  we  find  not  only  the  familiar  ideas, 
but  the  familiar  mental  method  of  Croce,  which 
consists  chiefly  in  multiplying  distinctions  just 
in  order  to  deny  them,  in  scattering  equality 
signs  right  and  left,  in  that  pleasant  little  game 
in  which  you  announce  that  a  thing  is  white  and 
black  at  the  same  time,  and  that  it  is  white  pre- 
cisely because  it  is  black,  and  black  precisely  be- 
cause it  is  white.  The  summit  of  truth,  for  ex- 
ample, is  so  situated  that  the  conqueror  "reaches 


166   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

the  sighed-for  eminence,  repulsing  his  adversary, 
and  yet  in  his  company."  ^  Every  particular 
concept  "is  independent  on  one  side  and  de- 
pendent on  another,  or  both  independent  and  de- 
pendent." ^  The  spirit  which  possesses  intui- 
tion "finds  in  that  virtue,  together  with  its  satis- 
faction, its  dissatisfaction."  ^  Foscolo,  after  the 
writing  of  a  certain  famous  ode,  is  "a  poet  who 
has  utterly  achieved  his  task,  and  is  therefore  no 
longer  a  poet."  *  The  paths  of  error  are  the 
same  as  the  paths  of  truth  ;^  nay,  more,  pure  error 
does  not  exist,  for  if  it  did  exist,  it  would  be 
truth.®  The  concept  and  other  things  which  are 
not  art  "are  in  art  as  art,  either  antecedent  or 
consequent."  ^  The  activities  of  the  spirit  are 
at  the  same  time  all  real  and  all  unreal.^ 

You  simply  cannot  count  the  identifications: 
philosophy  is  religion,®  history,^^  poetry;  ^^  lan- 
guage is  art;^^  art  is  intuition,  intuition  is  ex- 
pression, expression  is  imagination,  imagination 
is  fancy,  fancy  is  lyrism,  lyrism  is  intuition,  ex- 
pression is  beauty,  etcetera,  etcetera.  Croce's 
logic  tends  inevitably  and  infinitely  toward  fu- 
sions (not  to  say  confusions).  One  does  not  see 
what  is  to  prevent  his  reducing  the  entire  system, 
by  means  of  such  identities,  to  one  single  word,  to 
that  Absolute  which  he  regards  as  the  synthesis 
of  syntheses,  the  Spirit,  the  Real,  and  so  forth. 

»P.  240.      ^P.  274.      8 P.  277.       «P.  278.      "P.  226.      « P.  239. 
•'  P.  283.     «  Pp.  282-83.     »  P.  237.     "  P.  279.    "  P.  285.    ^  P.  264. 


CROCE  167 

If  you  disregard  critical  trivialities  and  didactic 
accessories,  the  entire  aesthetic  system  of  Croce 
amounts  merely  to  a  hunt  for  pseudonyms  of  the 
word  art,  and  may  indeed  be  stated  briefly  and 
accurately  in  this  formula :  art  =  intuition  =  ex- 
pression =  feeling  =  imagination  =  fancy  =  lyr- 
ism  =  beauty.  And  you  must  be  very  careful 
not  to  take  these  words  with  the  shadings  and  dis- 
tinctions which  they  have  in  ordinary  or  scien- 
tific language.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  Every  word  is 
merely  a  different  series  of  syllables  signifying 
absolutely  and  completely  the  same  thing;  every 
term  in  the  list  may  be  superposed  logically  and 
exactly  on  any  other  term.  What  is  not  per- 
ceived by  intuition  is  not  art;  what  is  not  ex- 
pressed is  not  even  perceived  by  intuition ;  an  un- 
successful expression  is  not  even  an  expression, 
and  every  successful  expression — that  is  to  say, 
every  expression  that  is  an  expression — is  beau- 
tiful. That  is  all.  You  cannot  get  from  Croce 
any  further  information  as  to  the  nature  of  art. 
He  offers  nothing  save  a  string  of  identities 
which  in  the  last  analysis  mean  that  art  is  art  and 
is  nothing  else — a  discovery  which,  I  believe,  had 
been  made  some  time  before  the  glorious  eight- 
eenth of  February  of  the  year  1900. 

The  other  remarks  related  to  this  central  pro- 
nouncement have  no  real  significance.  He  be- 
gins, for  example,  by  maintaining  that  art  is  not 


1G8  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

a  physical  fact,^  but  on  the  next  page  he  proves 
that  "physical  facts  do  not  possess  reality."  All 
he  has  said,  then,  is  that  since  art  is  a  real  fact 
it  cannot  belong  to  a  class  of  unreal  facts — ^that 
is,  that  art  is  a  thing  which  does  in  truth  exist. 
Qiiod  non  erat  demonstrandum. 

But  we  do  not  turn  to  a  philosopher  to  learn 
that  art  is  art,  and  that  art  is  a  portion  of  reality. 
So  much  we  may  infer  for  ourselves,  with  our 
own  weak  powers,  even  without  recourse  to  Vico 
or  to  Baumgarten.  From  the  philosopher  we 
seek  something  more.  We  seek,  for  instance, 
some  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  of  art  which 
shall  be  new  and  constructive  even  though  it  be 
incomplete.  We  seek  primarily  to  ascertain 
whether  or  not  there  exists  a  sure  and  certain 
standard  by  which  we  may  judge  the  beauty  and 
the  ugliness  of  works  of  art.  But  Croce  gives 
us  no  help.  There  are  just  two  types  of  ex- 
planation :  the  type  that  goes  from  the  particular 
to  the  general,  and  the  type  that  starts  with  the 
whole  and  proceeds  to  the  component  parts.  In 
the  first  case  we  affirm  that  a  given  object  be- 
longs to  a  certain  class  of  things  having  certain 
common  characteristics ;  in  the  second  we  analyze 
the  thing  itself,  and  reveal  its  nature  by  reduc- 
ing it  to  its  elements.  But  in  the  aesthetics  of 
Croce  neither  one  of  these  two  types  of  explana- 
tion is  to  be  found.     His  procedure  consists  al- 

^  p.  229. 


CROCE  169 

ways  and  everywhere  in  the  establishment  of 
identities,  that  is  to  say,  in  proving  the  perfect 
equivalence,  the  exact  interchangeableness  of  the 
concepts  under  discussion.  Expression,  fancy, 
imagination,  are  not  elements  or  factors  of  art; 
they  are  art  itself,  in  its  entirety.  Intuition  and 
lyrism  cannot  be  defined  as  individual  members 
of  the  large  class  of  the  phenomena  of  the  spirit, 
because  they  include  the  whole  range  of  the 
phenomena  of  the  spirit  with  which  art  is  con- 
cerned. At  the  most  they  may  be  considered 
as  proper  to  the  human  spirit,  but  since  the 
human  spirit  belongs  to  the  universal  spirit,  and 
the  universal  spirit  is  identical  with  the  whole, 
and  the  whole  is  inexpressible  because  it  cannot 
be  distinguished  from  anything  else  (since  no 
reality  exists  outside  it),  your  final  result  is  that 
intuition  is  an  element  of  reality — that  is  to  say, 
you  know  just  as  much  about  it  as  you  knew 
before. 

Croce's  strategy  consists  in  taking  secret  ad- 
vantage of  the  different  meanings  of  the  concepts 
which  he  employs — denying  their  diversity,  but 
using  them  (without  seeming  to  do  so)  in  such 
a  way  as  to  give  a  certain  coloring  and  a  certain 
content  to  his  system,  which  would  otherwise  be 
merely  a  game  of  words — whereas,  to  be  just,  not 
more  than  three-fourths  of  it,  or  at  the  most  four- 
fifths,  is  merely  a  ffame  of  words. 


170   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Croce  faces  this  dilemma:  either  he  must  con- 
tradict himself  by  assuming  that  there  are  dif- 
ferences between  phenomena  which  he  has  called 
identical,  or  he  must  put  ink  on  paper  without 
intelligible  results.  Impelled  by  the  desire  to 
say  something,  Croce  here  and  there  loosens  the 
links  of  his  chain  of  homogeneity;  for  instance, 
after  saying  that  art  is  feeling,  he  affirms  that 
"what  gives  coherence  and  unity  to  the  intuition 
is  feeling:  the  intuition  is  really  such  because  it 
represents  a  feeling,  and  can  only  appear  from 
and  upon  that."  ^  Now  if  feeling  gives  some- 
thing to  intuition;  if  intuition  represents  feel- 
ing and  appears  from  feeling,  then  intuition  and 
feeling  are  two  different  things;  whereas  Croce 
maintains  elsewhere  that  intuition  is  art  and  that 
feeling  is  art,"  forgetting,  at  the  appropriate 
moment,  the  very  simple  mathematical  and  logi- 
cal axiom  which  teaches  us  that  two  things  equal 
to  the  same  thing  are  equal  to  each  other. 

Nor  is  there  any  hope  of  reaching  a  concrete 
understanding  through  the  idea  that  those  phases 
of  the  spirit  which  are  represented  as  identical 
may  succeed  each  other  in  time.  Croce  denies 
resolutely  that  there  is  any  such  succession.  Un- 
til intuition  is  expressed,  it  does  not  exist  even 
as  intuition.  "Thought,  musical  fancy,  pictorial 
image,  did  not  indeed  exist  without  expression, 

*F.m.  'P.  25.5. 


CROCE  171 

they  did  not  exist  at  all  previous  to  the  formation 
of  this  expressive  side  of  the  spirit."  ^ 

To  the  two  fundamental  questions  that  men 
ask  of  aestheticians — "What  is  art?"  and  "What 
is  beauty?" — Croce  either  does  not  deign  to  re- 
ply, or  replies  in  antediluvian  fashion,  "Art  is 
symbol,  all  symbol."  ^  "An  aspiration  enclosed 
in  the  circle  of  a  representaion — ^that  is  art;  and 
in  it  the  aspiration  alone  stands  for  the  repre- 
sentation, and  the  representation  alone  for  the  as- 
piration." ^  "Art  is  a  true  cestlietic  synthesis  a 
priori  of  feeling  and  image  in  the  intuition."  * 
These  definitions,  to  my  mind,  do  nothing  more 
than  repeat,  in  more  elegant  terms,  in  more  so- 
phistical formulae,  the  old  truism  that  art  con- 
sists in  the  expression  of  feeling. 

With  regard  to  beauty  we  are  still  more  deeply 
in  the  dark.  "An  appropriate  expression,  if  ap- 
propriate, is  also  beautiful,  beauty  being  nothing 
but  the  determination  of  the  image  and  therefore 
of  the  expression."  ^  But  we  have  learned  that 
an  expression  which  is  not  appropriate  is  not  even 
an  expression,  and  we  remember  that  art  is  noth- 
ing other  than  expression :  all  art,  then,  is  proper 
and  determinate,  in  other  words,  beautiful.  We 
are  lost  in  another  hopeless  labyrinth  of  iden- 
tities. 

And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  the  concepts  of  ap- 
propriateness and  determinateness  are  the  most 

*P.  258.  »P.  245.  "P.  248,  *P.  254.  »P.  262. 


172   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

indeterminate  of  all  possible  concepts.  Appro- 
priate, if  I  mistake  not,  means  adapted,  and 
adapted  brings  us  back  to  the  idea  of  purpose. 
But  what  is  the  purpose  of  art?  To  move? 
There  are  works  which  move  many  people,  and 
yet  are  not  beautiful.  To  reveal?  But  there 
are  some  to  whom  a  single  epithet  reveals  the 
whole,  and  others  to  whom  a  whole  series  of  de- 
scriptions will  not  convey  the  gift  of  vision.  And 
what  is  the  meaning  of  determinateness?  Cer- 
tainly not  logical  clearness,  for  there  are  poems 
which  are  great  precisely  because  of  their  unde- 
fined suggestiveness ;  not  completeness — else  a 
notary's  inventory  would  be  more  beautiful  than 
a  swift  poetic  image.  And  if  we  turn  to  the 
standard  set  up  by  Croce  in  the  Esthetics  itself 
— ^the  standard  of  success  and  failure — we  are 
no  better  off.  The  idea  of  success  is  indissolubly 
associated  with  the  idea  of  a  model  (an  object  or 
an  action)  which  the  artist  approaches  more  or 
less  closely  or  not  at  all.  But  where  and  what 
are  the  models  to  which  the  critic  may  refer  in 
judging  the  success,  that  is,  the  beauty,  of  a  work 
of  art?  Surely  not  the  ideal  images  that  may 
arise  in  critics'  heads:  for  if  they  really  had  im- 
ages superior  to  existing  works  they  would  at 
once  express  them — and  then  they  would  be  no 
longer  critics,  but  artists. 

And  yet  a  standard  for  the  estimate  of  beauty 
in  art  is  absolutely  necessary  if,  as  Croce  admits, 


CROCE  173 

the  service  of  the  critic  consists  in  "clearly  stat- 
ing whether  a  work  be  beautiful  or  ugly."  ^ 

In  the  presence  of  such  thoughts  and  such  a 
way  of  thinking,  in  the  presence  of  a  theory  which 
wavers  constantly  between  nonsense  and  mere 
common  sense,  between  emptiness  and  banality, 
one  is  forced  to  ask  why  it  is  that  Croce's  books 
have  won  such  fame  in  Italy.  One  reason,  at 
least,  is  this:  among  the  things  which  Croce  re- 
peats so  often  there  is  one  indubitable  truth, 
namely,  that  Italians  know  little  or  nothing  about 
philosophy.  Croce's  advent  occurred  after 
twenty  or  thirty  years  of  positivism  had  made 
our  young  men  forget  the  strong  and  ancient 
language  of  metaphysics;  the  thirst  for  greater 
certainty  remained;  Croce  came  and  conquered. 
The  average  Italian,  weary  of  his  positivists — 
Lombroso,  Ardigo,  Ferri,  Sergi — threw  himself 
upon  the  books  of  Croce  in  the  belief  that  the 
philosophy  dished  out  in  them  was  the  whole  of 
philosophy  and  nothing  but  philosophy.  Croce's 
popularity  was  increased  by  the  fact  that  he  be- 
gan his  system  with  a  treatment  of  art,  thus  win- 
ning all  the  men  of  letters  of  his  land,  who,  since 
they  are  (or  think  themselves)  capable  of  art, 
are  persuaded  that  they  are  capable  also  of  un- 
derstanding the  theory  of  art. 

But  just  there  lies  a  serious  difficulty.  The 
theorist  should  understand  and  feel,  deeply  and 

»P.  267. 


174  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

thoroughly,  the  phenomenon  he  is  discussing: 
whereas  Croce,  as  his  too  extensive  excursions 
into  literary  criticism  make  evident,  has  not  the 
slightest  artistic  sensitiveness  nor  the  slightest 
taste  beyond  that  which  is  merely  scholastic  and 
traditional.  There  are  no  works  in  which  the 
sense  of  art  is  more  completely  lacking  than  in 
those  of  Croce.  That  is  why  he  has  brought 
himself  to  consider  the  theory  of  art  as  a  closed 
circle  of  six  or  seven  Siamese  twins,  so  identical 
one  with  the  other  that  no  one  of  them  gives 
any  help  in  the  understanding  of  another.  And 
that  is  why  he  has  had  to  cover  the  banality  of  his 
commonplaces  with  a  sophistical  counterpoint  of 
arbitrary  abstractions. 

At  a  certain  point  in  his  book  Croce  expresses 
the  belief  that  some  of  his  theories,  because  of 
their  novelty,  will  at  first  produce  a  sort  of  be- 
wilderment. The  illustrious  theorist  is  right,  but 
he  need  not  worry.  The  reader's  bewilderment, 
when  he  comes  really  to  understand  the  situa- 
tion, is  merely  the  bewilderment  that  comes  with 
each  new  proof  of  the  fact  that  enormous  popu- 
larity may  be  won  at  any  time  by  the  utterance 
of  the  most  bromidic  of  truisms,  provided  they 
be  furbished  up  with  a  little  coquetry  and  a 
little  mystery. 


XII 

ARMANDO  SPADINI* 

Armando  Spadini  is  an  Italian  painter, 
Italian  in  fatherland  and  in  style.  He  was  born 
in  Florence  in  1883,  and  has  been  living  in  Rome 
since  1910. 

Though  he  has  reached  the  mid-point  of  his 
life  and  his  work,  I  do  not  know  how  his  credit 
is  rated  on  the  pictorial  exchange,  nor  in  what 
esteem  he  is  held  by  those  doubly  ignorant  critics 
who  nourish  the  emaciated  arts  of  the  present  day 
with  myrrh  or  hemlock.  There  are  two  tribes 
of  these  critic-nurses:  the  old-school  tribe  of  the 
Minoses,  who  have  nothing  left  of  the  original 
Minos  except  his  monstrosity;  and  the  new- 
school  tribe  of  the  Ten,  who  retain  but  one  at- 
tribute of  the  original  inquisitors — the  mask.  I 
fear  that  Spadini's  name  is  not  in  the  good  books 
of  either  tribe.  But  that  may  be  a  good  sign 
after  all. 

To  form  a  fair  judgment  of  Spadini,  one  must 
know  the  man,  and  not  merely  his  painting, 
which  in  itself  might  seem  so  facile  and  so  com- 

»Writteninl918. 

175 


176   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

monplace  as  to  deserve  only  a  word  and  a  glance. 
And  the  principle  that  you  must  know  a  man  in 
order  to  understand  his  work  has  special  force 
when  that  work  is  not  the  labored  product  of  a 
brain,  but  a  free  expression  of  nature  incarnate 
in  a  complete  personality. 

Armando  Spadini,  like  all  who  work  by  inspi- 
ration and  by  instinct  rather  than  by  deliberate 
will,  is  still  a  child,  despite  his  five  and  thirty 
years;  a  child  spoiled  by  life,  by  suffering,  by 
men;  a  restless  child,  a  melancholy  child,  but  a 
child  with  all  that  is  good  and  all  that  is  ill  in 
the  madness  and  the  divinity  of  childhood.  He 
does  not  advance  by  plans  and  calculations,  as 
do  serious  men,  convinced  seekers,  self-made  men. 
He  moves  by  leaps,  by  improvisations,  by  dashes 
and  flashes.  Something  suddenly  stirs  him, 
draws  him,  takes  possession  of  him.  He  is  like 
a  child  with  a  new  toy,  like  a  moth  drawn  to  the 
flame.  Nothing  then  can  hold  him  back,  and  no 
one  can  control  him.  He  goes  into  a  sort  of 
furious  trance  or  epileptic  seizure,  and  therein 
he  remains  until,  conquered  or  conquering,  he 
returns  to  the  everyday  sadness  of  all  those  who 
feel  that  their  achievement  is  still  far  short  of 
the  ideal. 

Spadini  is  a  primitive  being,  a  creature  of  pas- 
sion, of  impulse  and  excess,  never  within  the 
balance  of  a  manhood  that  has  adapted  itself  to 
law.     Within  the  course  of  a  few  days,  of  a  few 


ARMANDO  SPADINI  177 

hours,  he  can  be  jealous  and  generous,  egotistic 
and  loving,  grasping  and  prodigal,  chaste  and  in- 
continent, ascetic  and  inebriate,  prolific  and  idle. 
He  may  fast  for  a  week,  and  for  the  next  week 
eat  from  morning  until  night.  He  may  weep  in 
despair  for  the  death  of  a  friend,  and  share  the 
merriment  of  a  group  of  companions  before  the 
day  is  out.  He  may  be  timid  as  a  whipped  dog, 
and  forthwith  valiant  as  a  paladin. 

His  character  is  not  yet  formed,  nor  will  it 
ever  attain  the  cold  and  reasoned  stability  of  the 
successful.  It  is  still  plastic,  like  that  of  chil- 
dren, or  of  primitive  folk,  or  of  women.  He  is 
a  bundle  of  passions  and  of  impulses,  of  manias 
and  of  fixed  ideas,  of  superstitions  and  naivetes. 
But  his  dominant  passion  is  painting:  he  mar- 
vels at  the  beauty  of  the  visible  world,  he  yearns 
continually  to  copy  it,  to  make  it  over,  to  transfer 
its  color  and  its  charm  to  bits  of  canvas.  In  his 
most  constant  essence  he  is  a  man  enamored  of 
reality,  and  served  by  two  eyes  and  a  hand.  He 
hungers  for  visual  reality  as  a  libertine  for  his 
prey,  as  a  scholar  for  books,  as  a  peasant  for 
land. 

He  paints  as  he  eats :  from  necessity,  and  with 
more  or  less  appetite  according  to  the  time  of 
day  and  the  state  of  his  soul.  He  has  none  of 
the  traits  of  the  salaried  employee  of  beauty  and 
profundity.  He  is  as  greedy  as  a  child,  greedy 
not  only  for  meat  and  wine,  but  for  color  and 


178  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

form.  The  world  is  to  him  an  earthly  paradise 
which  he  desires  to  clutch,  to  squeeze,  to  bite,  to 
possess  completely.  Women,  animals,  plants, 
children:  the  nearest  things,  the  things  in  reach, 
the  things  he  can  grasp  most  easily.  His  paint- 
ing is  a  continual  conquest,  an  almost  sensual 
enjoyment  renewed  till  weariness  sets  in.  He 
is  capable  of  drawing  the  same  face  a  hundred 
times  in  all  its  different  expressions,  "in  all  lights, 
in  all  positions,  in  all  companies — never  satisfied 
till  he  has  captured  and  sucked  and  swallowed 
its  visual  completeness. 

It  takes  but  little  to  amuse  and  to  content  him : 
the  shadows  of  a  pergola,  the  edge  of  a  table,  the 
turn  of  a  path,  the  corner  of  a  room.  But  in  his 
domestic  scenes  there  must  be  living  creatures, 
the  same,  it  may  be,  from  canvas  to  canvas.  The 
world  is  so  rich,  so  different  from  season  to  sea- 
son and  from  hour  to  hour — and  it  is  so  hard  to 
represent  one  single  square  of  it  with  the  full 
force  of  truth — that  a  humble  dwelling  and  a  sim- 
ple family  are  enough,  and  more  than  enough, 
for  the  pictorial  endeavor  of  a  lifetime. 

Spadini  does  not  turn,  for  elements  of  inter- 
est or  novelty,  to  history,  mythology,  or  legend, 
nor — as  is  now  the  fashion — to  the  composition 
and  dissection  of  unusual  objects,  to  the  bones  of 
manikins,  to  the  deformations  of  still  life,  to  the 
design  of  abstract  forms.  If  painting  is  to  be 
independent  of  its  subject,  there  is  no  reason, 


ARMANDO  SPADINI  179 

so  it  seems  to  him,  why  he  should  not  make  use 
of  the  eternal  model,  the  human  figure.  And  his 
choice  of  men  and  women  as  subjects  is  not  made 
in  the  hope  that  charm  of  anecdote  or  psycho- 
logical depth  may  hide  artistic  poverty.  He 
seeks  to  convey  emotion  not  by  the  subjects  rep- 
resented, but  by  his  means  of  representing  them. 
He  is,  in  short,  a  painter,  and  nothing  more  than 
a  painter:  not  a  historian,  not  a  scientist,  not  a 
raconteur,  not  a  metaphysician.  Nor  can  it  be 
maintained  that  as  a  subject  for  pure  painting 
a  woman  or  a  child  is  inferior  to  a  plate  of  ap- 
ples or  a  fantastic  hieroglyph.  Recourse  to 
such  indifferent  or  unreal  subjects  for  the  sake 
of  concentrating  attention  on  the  pictorial  method 
is  in  a  sense  a  catering  to  the  laziness  of  the  spec-: 
tator.  The  spectator  is  all  too  ready,  it  is  true, 
to  look  at  the  subject  and  not  at  the  execution; 
but  if  he  has  the  least  suspicion  of  the  meaning 
of  painting  he  ought  to  be  able  to  distinguish 
purely  pictorial  value  from  its  decorative  or  nar- 
rative or  religious  pretext. 

In  any  case,  whatever  the  fashions  and  theories 
of  the  moment,  Spadini  does  not  claim  to  be  an 
innovator,  a  seeker,  a  theorist,  an  exception,  a 
pioneer.  He  is  content  to  be  a  true  painter, 
and  at  the  most,  an  Italian  painter.  He  has  no 
fear  of  tradition,  which  for  the  strong  is  a  spring- 
board, not  a  prison.     He  has  visited  the  galleries, 


180   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

but  has  left  them  to  discover  truth  again  for  him- 
self, and  to  transform  it  in  his  own  fashion. 

Involuntarily,  and  perhaps  unconsciously,  he 
has  paralleled  the  whole  development  of  modern 
painting.  He  began  in  the  mode  of  the  Tus- 
cans, the  Giottesques :  he  drew  with  such  scrupu- 
lous Florentine  exactitude,  with  such  diligence 
in  line,  as  to  seem  in  certain  sketches  a  mere 
calligrapher.  That  was  the  time  of  his  enthu- 
siasm for  the  precise  drawings  of  Leonardo  and 
the  dainty  coloring  of  Filippino  Lippi.  That 
was  the  time — do  you  remember,  Spadini? — 
when  we  used  to  wander  among  the  cypresses  of 
Vincigliata  and  the  caverns  of  Monte  Ceceri,  the 
time  when  I  was  publishing  the  Leonardo.  That 
was  the  dawn. 

But  the  asceticism  of  the  quattrocentist  draw- 
ings gave  j)lace  to  Venetian  sensuality.  Display 
after  simplicity,  woman  after  the  Madonna,  color 
after  line,  Titian  after  Giotto.  He  discovered 
florid  flesh,  sumptuous  stuffs,  gleaming  silks, 
golden  shadows,  summer  skies.  He  undertook 
broad  decorative  compositions,  country  scenes, 
sacred  or  profane,  in  which  an  oppressive  warmth 
of  luxury  and  of  love  casts  over  all  a  sense  of 
decadent  monotony.  The  "Finding  of  the  Child 
Moses,"  painted  many  years  ago,  serves  to  illus- 
trate this  second  period. 

Then  came  a  Spanish,  or,  more  precisely,  a 
Goyesque  period.     Sumptuousness  yields  again 


ARMANDO  SPADINI  181 

to  sobriety,  and  attention  is  concentrated  on 
the  figure.  Two  portraits  of  Pasqualina,  the 
painter's  wife — in  one  she  has  a  light  shawl,  in 
the  other  she  is  wearing  a  blue  dress — represent 
this  transition. 

But  Spadini,  who  had  discovered  Goya 
without  visiting  Spain,  proceeded  to  discover  im- 
pressionism without  going  to  Paris.  And  in 
impressionism  he  finally  approached  the  redis- 
covery of  himself.  Some  of  his  groups,  painted  a 
few  years  ago,  suggest  a  humbler  and  less  sty- 
listic Renoir.  But  though  Spadini  may  be  rightly 
called  the  first  and  the  sanest  of  the  Italian  im- 
pressionists, he  cannot  be  classed  as  a  mere 
scholar  of  the  French.  Like  the  French,  he 
forms  his  art  on  the  old  masters — Cezanne  copied 
the  Venetians  and  sought  to  paint  like  Titian — 
but  he  has  his  own  way  of  representing  the  frag- 
ments of  the  world  which  he  discerns  from  time  to 
time.  His  very  near-sightedness  helps  him  to 
see  things  in  a  personal  manner.  His  ambition 
is  to  be  the  copyist  of  reality,  not  the  copyist  of 
painters  who  have  recast  reality.  His  painting 
now  is  freer,  more  spontaneous,  broader,  more 
essential.  He  gives  no  thought  to  photographic 
and  scholastic  exactness,  he  makes  no  concessions 
to  the  prettiness  beloved  of  the  bourgeoisie,  he 
does  not  search  for  sentimental  effects  or  for  ex- 
ternal novelty.  A  mere  ordinary  group  of  living 
beings  in  the  open  air,  undisturbed  by  artificial 


182  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

arrangement,  is  enough  to  give  him  the  material 
for  a  picture — an  ensemble  of  tones  and  lights 
which  will  convey  the  immediate  impression  of 
truth.  That  is  all  he  seeks:  not  sharpness  of 
outline,  not  scenic  grace,  not  pathos,  not  hiero- 
glyphic mystery,  not  mathematical  abstraction. 
He  is  a  clear,  sane,  simple,  homely  painter.  Look 
at  the  two  paintings  of  the  Pincian  Hill  (the 
little  one  with  the  blue  sky  and  the  flowers,  and 
the  larger  one  with  the  carriages)  or  the  two  of 
paths  in  the  Villa  Borghese  (the  lonely  one,  and 
the  one  A\ith  people  on  the  benches)  ;  look  par- 
ticularly at  the  portrait  of  Pasqualina  with  the 
broom  and  the  little  girl  turning  her  back  and 
her  braided  hair,  a  painting  of  the  utmost  loving 
delicacy  in  color;  or  look  at  the  other  large  un- 
finished household  scene  that  hangs  beside  it — 
and  you  will  understand  what  I  mean  when  I 
speak  of  the  Italian  loyalty  of  Spadini.  Even 
his  color  has  grown  clearer  of  late.  He  is  suc- 
cessful in  his  greens,  in  his  violets,  and  in  his 
dainty  shades  of  rose;  he  has  lost  the  sickly  mu- 
seum yellow. 

He  has  escaped  the  infection  of  all  those  nov- 
elties which  have  lately  been  transplanted  from 
France  to  decay  in  Italy.  In  the  work  of  pio- 
neers such  novelties  have  a  revealing  and  a  revo- 
lutionary value  which  I  should  be  the  first  to  ac- 
knowledge (and  here  in  Italy  the  names  of 
SoflSci  and  of  Carra  will  suffice  to  establish  the 


ARMANDO  SPADINI  183 

point).  But  these  French  importations  have 
fallen  little  by  little  into  the  hands  of  a  troupe 
of  helpless  monkeys  who  have  managed  to  arouse 
a  general  disgust.  A  rabble  of  mediocre  painters, 
men  and  women  scarcely  competent  to  draw 
Vermouth  posters  or  fashion-plates  for  the  Let- 
tura,  have  found  in  the  recent  tendencies  of  paint- 
ing a  means  of  camouflaging  themselves  as  futur- 
ists— ^to  put  it  more  plainly,  a  means  of  painting 
without  knowing  how  to  paint,  and  of  seeming 
new  without  being  really  new,  even  in  their  im- 
pudence and  falsity. 

Thus  we  have  in  Italy  a  thin  broth  of  Van 
Gogh,  Matisse,  Picasso,  and  Boccioni,  served  up 
as  the  last  word  and  the  quintessence  of  pictorial 
and  plastic  art.  This  imported  and  simulated 
art  has  two  main  divisions.  Some  of  its  follow- 
ers tend  to  the  infantile,  to  clumsy  formlessness, 
to  a  barbaric  simplification.  Others  aspire  to 
complexity,  to  mystery,  to  inconclusive  flourishes, 
to  metaphysical  and  dynamic  geometry.  The 
first  group  ends  in  Imbecilism,  the  other  in 
Hieroglyphicism ;  but  the  banner  they  both  bear 
is  that  of  the  great  school  of  False  Pretense.  We 
may  well  admire  real  children  who  paint  as  chil- 
dren, and  real  savages  who  carve  as  savages. 
We  may  well  admire  the  hieroglyphics  of  Egypt 
and  of  Persia.  We  may  well  respect  the  pio- 
neers, the  courageous  creators,  who  at  the  cost  of 
seeming  to  be  charlatans  seek  to  discover  new 


184  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

heavens  and  new  earths  of  artistic  sensibility. 
But  we  may  equally  well  detest  the  whole  mush- 
room growth  of  those  academicians  of  the  ex- 
travagant who  attempt  to  mask  the  incurable 
poverty  and  emptiness  of  their  tiny  souls  through 
the  repetition  of  facile  semblances.  And  in  the 
presence  of  this  cheap  pretentiousness  those  who 
cling  to  the  truth  feel  the  need  of  drawing  close 
to  something  more  vital.  Soffici  goes  back  to 
the  art  of  the  folk;  Carra,  through  Giotto  and 
Paolo  Uccello,  resumes  the  tradition  of  precise 
volume  and  refined  color;  De  Chirico  discovers 
in  the  architecture  of  old  Italian  piazze  and  in 
the  solid  masses  of  life  a  field  for  painting  in 
the  grand  style  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

Spadini  has  had  no  such  experience.  He  has 
not  felt  the  need  of  returning  to  the  true  Italian 
tradition — he  had  never  left  it.  He  has  never  had 
the  craving  for  perilous  adventure,  has  never 
been  attracted  by  the  cerebral  ingenuity  of  those 
theorists  whose  work  has  so  often  turned  out  to 
be  an  object  of  ephemeral  curiosity,  undeserving 
of  the  name  of  painting.  He  has  never  left  re- 
ality, nor  the  Italian  method  of  representing  re- 
ality. No  startling  discoveries,  but  no  betrayals 
and  no  weaknesses.  He  has  never  played  the 
cubist  nor  the  futurist;  neither  has  he  let  him- 
self be  led  aside,  like  so  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries, by  the  preceding  fashions,  by  the  imi- 
tation (often  fruitful,  to  be  sure)  of  a  Stuck  or 


ARMANDO  SPADINI  185 

an  Anglada.  He  has  never  tried  the  wild  ex- 
citement of  research,  but  he  has  never  sunk  to 
the  elegant  banditry  of  those  who  paint  with  an 
eye  to  the  winning  of  medals  and  high  prices. 
He  has  traveled  his  own  road,  conscious  of  the 
tremendous  difficulty  of  fixing  in  color  a  single 
fleeting  moment  of  truth;  he  has  felt  that  the 
daily  endeavor  to  do  this,  the  daily  struggle  to 
achieve  the  impossible,  is  enough  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  his  courage.  He  is  by  no  means  content 
with  the  whole  of  his  own  work,  and  if  he  were 
content,  his  very  contentment  would  mark  an 
end  and  a  condemnation.  But  if  in  spite  of  lone- 
liness, of  poverty,  and  of  envy  his  furious  efforts 
and  his  loving  insistence  have  enabled  him  now 
and  then  to  fix,  with  the  certainty  of  light  and  the 
evidence  of  color,  some  incidents  and  some  as- 
pects of  living  reality,  then  he  has  done  his  duty 
as  a  true  and  honest  painter,  and  we  as  artists 
and  as  Italians  owe  him  gratitude. 


XIII 
HAMLET  ^ 


Shakespeare  died  just  three  centuries  ago, 
on  the  twenty-third  of  April,  1616.  He  died — 
and  was  forgotten,  we  may  say,  for  a  century, 
until  in  1709  and  1710  Nicholas  Rowe  published 
the  first  approximately  complete  edition  of  his 
works.  Then  he  came  to  life  again,  to  a  hfe 
more  intense  and  more  vivid  than  the  Kfe  he  had 
lived  in  the  rough,  confused  age  of  the  Virgin 
Queen.  This  new  life  of  his  has  endured  for 
two  hundred  years.  It  was  initiated  by  a  pre- 
Romantic  impulse;  it  was  carried  to  universal 
fame  on  that  wave  of  Romanticism  whose  ripples 
have  not  yet  subsided,  that  wave  whereby  Shake- 
speare was  made  to  seem  a  fellow-citizen  of 
Goethe,  a  brother  of  Schlegel,  a  contemporary 
of  Victor  Hugo. 

But  now  a  second  night  hangs  over  Shake- 
speare; this  third  centenary  is  perhaps  the  be- 
ginning of  a  second  and  a  truer  death.     Today, 

•Written  in  1916,  for  the  third  centenary  of  Shakespeare's  death. 
186 


HAMLET  187 

silencing  for  a  moment,  with  the  arrogance  of 
fame,  the  furious  reveilles  of  the  world-wide  war, 
he  is  finding  in  England  and  elsewhere  men  and 
women  to  repeat  the  centenary  formulas  of  love 
and  admiration,  each  according  to  his  rite  and  his 
power,  by  erudition  or  exclamation,  by  rhetoric 
or  anecdote.  But  we  are  by  no  means  sure  that 
a  hundred  years  from  now  Shakespeare  will  be 
as  dominant  in  human  consciousness  as  habit  and 
tradition  have  made  him  for  our  own  generation. 

Nor  does  it  avail  to  say  that  Shakespeare  is 
modern  and  eternal,  that  his  restlessness  is  our 
restlessness,  that  his  fear  is  our  fear.  For  we 
are  changing,  and  those  who  are  to  come  after 
us  will  change  still  more.  Day  by  day  we  are 
becoming  harder  to  satisfy,  more  refined,  more 
discontented.  Fewer  things  give  us  pleasure,  and 
fewer  still  will  please  us  as  time  goes  on:  a  pain- 
ful condition,  but  a  condition  that  is  inevitable 
if  we  are  to  create  more  than  we  have  found, 
if  we  are  to  add  new  treasure  to  the  inheritance 
we  have  received  from  those  who,  though  dead, 
are  yet  immortal. 

We  are  growing  away  from  Shakespeare. 
That  terrible  old  dramatic  world  of  his,  compact 
of  grandeur  and  nocturnal  dread,  is  beginning  to 
make  us  smile.  There  is  too  much  machinery 
and  scene-painting  in  his  work.  We  of  today 
want  things  in  essence.  His  fancy,  even  when 
it  soars  most  wildly,  is  fashioned  and  controlled 


188  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

by  the  specific  social  forms  of  theatrical  action. 
His  lyric,  even  when  it  seems  to  win  an  inde- 
pendent life,  is  the  poetry  of  an  alchemist — or- 
nate, Parnassian.  It  tends  toward  the  madrigal 
and  the  tour  de  force.  And  we  want  things  in 
their  essence.  The  drama  is  composite.  It  is 
the  first  historic  form  of  spoken  art — it  derives 
from  magic  pantomimes,  from  primitive  cere- 
monies, from  sacred  mysteries — and  it  is  there- 
fore the  most  limited  and  the  least  legitimate  of 
arts.  It  carries  with  it  so  many  social,  external, 
material,  and  mji;hical  weights  and  motives  that 
it  cannot  completely  absorb  us  and  convince  us. 
Tragedy  presupposes  faith — some  sort  of  faith, 
whatsoever  it  may  be,  even  an  irreligious  faith 
— it  presupposes  a  system  of  morality,  a  system 
of  law,  and  the  possibility  of  opposition  between 
life  and  law  and  between  life  and  faith.  Death 
and  tragedy  spring  from  the  clash  between  pas- 
sion and  discipline.  But  today  we  have  lost  faith 
and  morality.  We  have  no  law,  no  discipline: 
the  myths  and  divinities  of  all  the  ages  are  dead 
and  turned  to  clay.  We  are  beyond  struggle, 
beyond  stageable  tragedy,  beyond  the  capacity 
for  sharing  with  eager  passion  in  the  old  dra- 
matic antitheses.  The  drama  is  receding  from 
us,  and  with  it  Shakespeare  too  recedes.  The 
very  qualities  that  have  brought  him  greatness 
and  glory  hitherto  will  hereafter  bring  forget- 
fulness  and  disesteem.    We  of  today  feel  poetry. 


HAMLET  189 

that  poetry  which  is  absokitely  poetic  and  in- 
timately alive  even  in  its  unspoken  implications 
— we  feel  the  lyric.  Other  forms  of  literary  art, 
narrative  or  dramatic,  will  doubtless  appeal  for 
centuries  to  the  higher  and  lower  castes  of  the 
incompetent,  but  as  the  generations  pass  they 
will  find  less  and  less  approval  from  those  few 
sensitive  minds  which  after  all  are  the  only  ones 
that  count,  since  they  are  the  only  ones  able  to 
create  poetry  or  understand  it. 

Shakespeare,  a  portent  of  dead  ages,  is  not 
great  enough  or  pure  enough  in  his  lyricism  to 
entitle  him  to  immortality  even  in  anthologies: 
he  moves  within  the  sphere  of  dramatic  action 
and  suffering,  in  those  ambiguous,  impure,  and 
external  forms  which  are  steadily  sinking  in  es- 
teem. For  us  the  death  of  Shakespeare  is  be- 
ginning now. 


n 


But  Shakespeare  is  still  great,  so  devotees  and 
conservatives  will  reply,  in  his  power  of  pene- 
trating and  representing  the  human  soul,  of  re- 
vealing— through  the  torments  of  his  characters 
— the  infamy  of  man,  the  blind  ferocity  of  fate, 
the  depths  and  the  terrors  of  life.  Such  is,  or 
should  be,  the  judgment  of  those  (and  they  are 
in  the  majority)  who  have  not  yet  reached  the 
most  radical  conclusions,  the  most  lacerating  and 


190   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

irremediable  solutions.  But  Shakespeare's  psy- 
chology and  philosophy  no  longer  have  their 
former  power  for  one  who  has  undergone  the 
desolation  of  the  modern  spiritual  hell,  and  has 
won  back  for  himself,  stone  by  stone,  and  blade 
of  grass  by  blade  of  grass,  a  corner  in  the  cold 
and  cruel  paradise  of  perfect  knowledge.  Yet 
the  majority  of  mankind  has  not  yet  come  even 
to  the  point  which  Shakespeare  reached,  and  is 
content  therefore  to  wonder  and  to  worship.  For 
the  development  of  the  human  spirit  does  not 
proceed  in  lines  of  contemporary  parallelism: 
brutes  of  the  Neanderthal  were  at  large  in 
the  very  years  when  Plato  lifted  his  youthful 
eyes  to  the  face  of  Socrates  and  listened  to  his 
holy  virtuosities. 

I  am  thinking  in  particular  of  Hamlet.  Ham- 
let has  been  regarded  by  critics  and  by  the  public 
as  the  most  profound  of  Shakespeare's  plays. 
Historians,  actors,  and  dilettantes  consider  it  his 
masterpiece.  I,  too,  many  years  ago,  had  a 
languid  fondness  for  the  Prince  of  Denmark, 
who  returned  my  affection.  How  many  nights 
we  spent  in  each  other's  company!  How  many 
fantastic  and  exciting  conversations  we  enjoyed 
which  are  not  to  be  found  in  any  printed  text! 
Hamlet  was  a  brother  to  me,  more  than  a  brother. 
Side  by  side  we  delved,  and  side  by  side  discov- 
ered some  of  those  mysteries  that  are  not  dreamt 
of  in  human  philosophies. 


HAMLET  191 

But  of  late,  thinking  of  Shakespeare's  death, 
I  have  reread  Hamlet.    The  beloved  brother  had     / 
disappeared,  and  in  his  place  I  found  a  fat  neuras-"'^'^ 
thenic,  half  evil,  half  imbecile. 

More  than  ever  before  the  dramatic  machinery 
annoys  me.  The  legendary  and  murderous  in- 
trigue that  supports  and  justifies  the  action,  the 
barbaric  events  and  manners,  among  which  the 
semi-barbaric  Hamlet  moves  as  an  intellectualist 
dispensing  justice,  repel  me  without  stirring  me. 
It  is  such  a  tragedy  as  people  seek  when  they 
go  to  the  theatre  to  laugh  or  tremble.  Here  there 
is  bait  a-plenty  for  those  who  need  blood  and 
miracles  to  stir  their  torpid  sensibility. 

In  Hamlet  nine  of  the  characters  are  killed. 
One  is  killed  before  the  curtain  rises;  but  he 
stalks,  a  vindictive  and  oratorical  spectre,  through 
two  acts  of  the  play.  A  second,  Polonius,  is 
killed  through  an  error  of  the  nervous  Hamlet. 
A  third,  Ophelia,  kills  herself  through  the  fault 
of  the  tender  Hamlet.  Two  others,  Rosencrantz 
and  Guildenstern,  are  killed  in  a  distant  city 
through  the  fault  of  the  astute  Hamlet.  The 
other  four  die  at  the  end  of  the  last  act:  the 
mother  a  suicide  by  mistake,  Laertes  and  Clau- 
dius at  Hamlet's  hand.  Hamlet  is  the  evil 
genius  of  himself  and  of  the  others.  To  avenge 
one  corpse  he  puts  eight  by  its  side.  And  at  least 
six  of  the  eight  are  innocent. 

But  this  excess  might  be  attributed  to  the  ne- 


192   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

cessities  of  the  story  and  the  stage.  The  funda- 
mental failure  is  in  the  justification  of  all  these 
terrible  and  funereal  events.  The  soul  of  the 
tragedy  is  false,  the  psychology  of  the  pro- 
tagonists is  incoherent,  the  most  striking  pense'es 
are  merely  banalities  in  disguise.  Something  is 
rotten  even  in  the  art  of  Shakesx)eare. 


Ill 


Hamlet's  case  is  simple  and  well  known.  He 
had  loved  his  father,  and  his  father  has  been  mur- 
dered. He  desires  to  slay  the  murderer;  and 
after  a  series  of  weaknesses  and  waverings  he 
succeeds  in  doing  so  at  the  moment  of  his  own 
death. 

We  are  then  in  the  realm  of  the  elementary 
and  savage  law  of  retribution :  an  eye  for  an  eye, 
a  life  for  a  life.  But  Prince  Hamlet  is  by  no 
means  a  primitive  man.  He  has  studied  phi- 
losophy; he  has  spent  the  best  years  of  his  life 
amid  the  wisdom  of  Wittenberg;  he  is  capable 
of  general  ideas.  He  therefore  colors  his  ven- 
geance with  the  motive  of  justice,  and  seeks  to 
act  not  as  a  rabid  brute,  but  as  a  man  pure  in 
the  assurance  and  the  majesty  of  his  right.  Yet 
here  his  error  starts.  For  justice  is  by  no  means 
the  same  thing  as  vengeance :  it  is  infinitely  more 
subtle  and  more  vast.    Justice  involves  intelli- 


HAMLET  193 

gence  and  reflection :  it  is  no  mere  unruly  mania 
for  private  slaughter.  There  is  a  justice,  human 
and  divine,  within  whose  course  even  crimes  may 
serve  as  just  and  necessary  acts.  Hamlet's 
father  confesses  his  own  damnation:  he  must  be 
punished  for  certain  "foul  crimes  done  in  my 
days  of  nature."  In  these  foul  crimes  lies  the 
first  justification  of  Claudius — not  in  his  own 
eyes,  or  in  those  of  Hamlet,  but  from  the  view- 
point of  universal  justice.  So  then  a  guilty  man 
has  slain  a  guilty  man;  and  to  appease  the  shadow 
of  the  guilty  man  who  has  been  slain,  others, 
guilty  and  innocent,  must  die.  And  an  apparent 
and  material  justice  engenders  sad  and  irrevoca- 
ble injustices. 

If  Hamlet  were  in  reality  a  man  of  exceptional 
intelligence,  as  he  seems  at  times  to  be,  he  would 
not  fix  upon  the  idea  of  vengeance,  or  at  the  least 
he  would  hesitate  to  do  so.  But  all  the  uncertain- 
ties of  Hamlet  have  reference  not  to  the  legiti- 
macy of  vengeance  in  itself — on  this  point  he  de- 
cides once  and  forever — but  merely  to  the  choice 
of  the  means  and  the  moment  for  vengeance. 

And  yet,  if  he  were  really  capable  of  thinking 
more  clearly  than  his  fellows,  vengeance  should 
have  seemed  to  him  a  terribly  complicated  and  a 
brutally  useless  thing.  Vengeance  cures  nothing; 
usually,  as  in  this  case,  it  adds  worse  ills  to  ills 
already  irreparable.  His  madness,  half  feigned, 
half  real,  swaying  between  epilepsy  and  imbecil- 


194  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

ity,  drives  him  to  slay  six  human  beings  by  his 
own  or  by  another  hand,  though  his  father  had 
asked  as  sacrifice  but  a  single  life.  He  destroys 
two  families,  a  dynasty,  his  love,  himself;  and 
from  all  this  death  not  a  single  principle  of  life 
comes  forth. 

^      He  knows  that  his  father  was  a  guilty  man; 

X  he  knows  that  he  himself  is  base,  vicious,  and 
homicidal.  Within  the  drama  he  appears  to  us 
as  a  deceiver,  a  slayer  of  souls  and  bodies.  Had 
he  the  right  to  heap  up  so  much  torture  when  his 
father  was  not  innocent,  when  he  himself  was  not 
innocent?  A  savage,  a  primitive  man,  would 
have  hastened  to  Claudius  and  killed  him  imme- 
diately on  receiving  the  command  to  avenge. 
Hamlet  requires  proof,  that  is,  reflection.  But 
his  reflection  yields  merely  a  restless  play  of 
shrewdness,  a  comedy  of  fits  and  starts,  through 
which  there  gleams  a  deep  filial  piety  and,  at 
the  end,  a  refined  cruelty.  He  even  spares 
Claudius  when  he  might  safely  kill  him,  merely 
because  he  finds  him  kneeling  and  in  a  state  of 
grace.    He  toys  with  his  tempestuous  despair. 

His  inner  experience  is  utterly  illogical.  Even 
before  he  has  spoken  with  the  spectre  he  feels 
repugnance  for  his  mother  and  hatred  for  his 
uncle.  Yet  even  after  the  terrible  revelation  he 
is  not  fully  convinced.  He  devises  the  scene  of 
the  Murder  of  Gonzago  in  order  to  obtain  a  defi- 
nite certainty,  and  he  does  not  even  trust  his  own 


HAMLET  195 

powers  of  observation,  but  brings  Horatio  in  as 
witness.  And  when  he  is  certain  he  wavers  still. 
He  slays  Polonius  through  error,  and  passively 
agrees  to  go  to  England  instead  of  acting  at  once 
and  resolutely. 

We  cannot  tell  what  he  seeks  at  sea:  perhaps 
merely  another  pretext  to  delay  action.  And 
when  he  returns,  after  he  has  sent  the  two  court- 
iers to  die  in  his  place,  he  philosophizes  in  ceme- 
teries instead  of  digging  the  grave  of  the  only 
man  he  has  a  right  to  strike.  Only  at  the  last, 
when  he  has  killed  his  friend  and  sees  his  mother 
and  himself  in  the  death  agony,  does  he,  with 
his  dying  arm,  take  the  one  life  the  savage  spectre 
had  demanded. 

No  less  incomprehensible  is  his  behavior 
toward  Ophelia,  whom  his  feigned  mad;iess  brings 
to  real  madness  and  to  piteous  death  in  the  in- 
different stream.  He  loves  Ophelia  truly,  and 
his  love  continues  even  after  her  death.  Might 
he  not  have  spared  her  in  his  tragic  comedy? 
Might  he  not  have  given  her  some  word  that 
would  have  enabled  her  to  wait  and  understand? 
"I  cannot  now  be  yours  nor  think  of  tenderness. 
When  I  have  fulfilled  my  duty  I  will  come  to  you 
again;  and  if  I  then  can  smile,  my  first  smile 
shall  be  for  your  white  face,  for  your  maidenly 
blushes.  Marvel  not  though  I  seem  strange  in 
word  and  deed.  Another  Hamlet  has  perforce 
entered  life;  but  the  Hamlet  that  you  knew  is 


i 


196  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

not  dead — he  that  spoke  to  you  so  sweetly,  as  his 
heart  overflowing  with  adoration  bade  him  speak 
— and  he  will  be  with  you  in  thought  forever, 
even  though  he  disappear." 

The  killing  of  Opheha  is  the  most  useless  and 
the  most  monstrous  of  all  the  cruelties  of  Ham- 
let. I  cannot  understand  how  a  single  soul  can 
have  forgiven  him  for  this.  His  rambling  frenzy 
at  her  tomb  does  not  suffice  to  obliterate  the 
crime.  She,  at  least,  was  pure  and  innocent; 
yet  through  the  fault  of  him  who  loved  her  there 
came  to  her  the  greatest  unhappiness  and  the 
most  unjust  fate.  To  her,  the  one  pure  being, 
the  one  innocent  heart — and  her  only  fault  was 
that  she  had  trusted  love! 


IV 


The  other  persons  of  the  drama  are  as  inco- 
herent as  the  Prince.  Claudius  is  at  heart  a 
cowardly  moralist  who  sins  through  blindness 
and  terror — yet  knows  that  he  is  sinning,  and  is 
capable  of  remorse.  Gertrude  is  still  more  in- 
explicable. Either  she  was  so  wicked  as  to  have 
formed  the  resolve  to  be  the  accomplice  and  wife 
of  the  assassin — and  in  that  case  one  cannot  un- 
derstand her  dismay  at  the  first  harsh  words  of 
Hamlet — or  she  was  at  heart  weak  and  affec- 
tionate— and  in  that  case  one  cannot  understand 


HAMLET  197 

why  she  obeyed  Claudius  and  allowed  the  death 
of  a  loving  husband  whom  she  loved.  The  little 
that  we  can  infer  from  the  conversation  of  this 
sinister  pair  leads  us  to  think  that  Hamlet  would  / 
have  wreaked  a  nobler  and  a  far  more  terrible  \ 
vengeance  if  he  had  let  them  live  with  their  mem- 
ories and  their  fears,  guarding  himself  against 
their  terror,  but  letting  them  realize  that  he  knew 
and  judged. 

Poor  Polonius,  a  ridiculous  victim,  despite  his 
skeptical  and  time-serving  courtly  wit,  does  not 
know  what  the  pother  is  all  about,  and  persists 
in  regarding  Hamlet's  madness  as  an  impossible 
amatory  delusion. 

Nor  can  we  save  the  famous  thoughts  of  Ham- X 
let — not  even  that  "To  be  or  not  to  be"  which,      \ 
after  all,  amounts  merely  to  this  superficial  com-      / 
monplace:  life  is  evil,  and  if  we  were  sure  that 
the  other  life  is  not  worse,  we  would  do  well  to 
commit  suicide.    What  better  can  one  say  of  his    ^, 
banal  reflections   in  the  cemetery — ^the    matter    / 
of  men's  bodies  is  but  dust,  and  may  return  to 
foul  places  and  to  base  uses — and  his  easy,  vul- 
gar invective  against  the  falseness  of  woman? 

Never  has  any  rereading  been  for  me  so  sad 
as  this — appropriate  in  its  very  sadness  to  the 
natural  melancholy  of  a  commemoration.  For 
me  today  not  only  is  Shakespeare  dead,  but  in 
my  spirit  his  i*estless  son  has  died  also. 


XIV 
REMY  DE  GOURMONT  ^ 


He  too  is  dead.  He  was  the  most  intelligent 
man  in  France,  and  one  of  the  keenest  intellects 
in  the  whole  world.  His  brain  was  an  instru- 
ment of  precision.  His  thought  had  the  lucidity 
of  distilled  alcohol,  as  clear  as  the  water  of  a 
mountain  spring,  yet  drawn  from  purple  clusters, 
and  carrying  the  inebriation,  the  vertigo,  the  wild 
fancy  of  a  year's  experience  compressed  into  a 
single  hour. 

He  died  several  days  ago.  The  Parisian  para- 
graphers  said  of  him,  as  they  would  say  of  the 
meanest  scribbler  of  a  mean  Matin,  that  "les 
lettres  fran9aises  ont  perdu  un  estimable  ecrivain 
et  un  homme  de  gout." 

His  death  was  little  heeded — because  of  the 
war,  and  because  he  did  not  die  at  the  front. 
There  was  much  talk  about  the  death  of  Peguy, 
because  Peguy  was  more  the  man  of  the  hour, 
was  more  vivid,  of  a  fresher  fame,  of  more  serious 

» Written  in  1915. 


REMY  DE  GOURMONT  199 

and  more  reassuring  features — and  because 
Peguy  was  killed  by  a  Prussian  bullet  in  the  de- 
fense of  the  fields  and  the  rights  of  France. 

There  was  much  talk  even  about  Fabre,  the 
friend  of  Mistral  and  of  insects,  who  died,  full 
of  days  and  honors,  at  almost  the  same  time. 
But  an  observer  of  insects  is  nearer  the  level  of 
our  journalists  than  an  observer  of  men.  Espe- 
cially if  the  observer  of  men  is  a  poet  as  well, 
and  does  not  live  on  the  ideas  of  Monsieur  De- 
larue.  It  was  Remy  de  Gourmont  who  uttered 
these  profound  and  bitter  words:  "II  faut 
flatter  les  imbeciles  et  les  flatter  dans  leurs  facul- 
tes  les  moins  nocives.  C'est  peut-etre  un  instinct 
de  conservation  qui  pousse  la  societe  a  conferer 
provisoirement  la  gloire  a  tant  de  mediocres 
esprits."  Provisionally.  Let  us  hope  for  the 
ultimate  revision. 


n 


Remy  de  Gourmont  died  too  soon.  He  was 
only  fifty-seven  years  of  age,  and  he  had  never 
swung  incense  before  any  fool.  Modest  and 
alone  in  a  great  dark  house  full  of  books— ^how 
well  I  remember  a  luminous  morning  in  Novem- 
ber, 1906,  in  the  Rue  des  Saints  Peres! — he  read 
books,  read  men  and  women,  read  the  ancients 
and  the  moderns  and  les  jeunes,  and  sought 
truth,  clear  French  truth,  pitiless  contemporary 


200  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

European  truth.  And  he  set  forth  that  truth 
ceaselessly,  without  cosmetics,  without  reticence 
or  omission.  The  truth — that  hard  and  unpleas- 
ant other  side  of  the  shield  of  illusion.  "Je  ne 
ferai  que  dire  la  verite,"  said  Flaubert,  "mais  elle 
sera  horrible,  cruelle  et  nue."  One  who  takes 
the  vows  of  obedience  to  such  truth  loses  all  right 
to  earthly  beatitude,  loses  all  hope  of  swift  glory, 
all  sympathy.  From  the  days  of  Socrates  to 
those  of  Nietzsche,  the  man  who  analyzes  and 
dissociates,  the  man  who  breaks  through  the  sur- 
face of  useful  and  convenient  beliefs  to  reveal 
the  fierce  and  injurious  truths  that  lie  beneath, 
has  been  ostracized  and  condemned  as  an  enemy 
to  the  State  and  to  the  gods. 

Remy  de  Gourmont  was  of  this  ill-regarded 
family.  Less  serene  and  profound  than  Soc- 
rates, less  violent  and  grand  than  Nietzsche,  he 
resembled  more  closely  the  great  Frenchmen  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  He  had  the  mahce  of 
Voltaire  (with  Voltaire's  apparently  innocent 
narrative  simplicity) ;  he  had  d'Alembert's  pas- 
sion for  disinterested  exactness ;  he  had  the  good- 
natured  frivolity  of  Fontenelle;  he  had  the 
branching  curiosity  of  Bayle.  But  the  man  he 
most  closely  resembles  is  Diderot,  who  has  always 
seemed  to  me  the  most  complete  and  vigorous 
genius  among  the  Encyclopedists.  In  Diderot, 
as  in  Remy  de  Gourmont,  one  may  find  a  natural 
inchnation  toward  general  ideas,  an  enjoyment 


KEMY  DE  GOUKMOIS^T  201 

of  specific  facts  and  scientific  theories,  a  happy, 
spontaneous  interweaving  of  art  and  philosophy, 
of  myth  and  thought,  of  type  and  paradox,  a 
common  dilettanteism  in  criticism  and  in  paint- 
ing. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  Remy  de  Gour- 
mont  was  not  merely  a  repetition  of  Diderot,  for 
no  man,  least  of  all  a  man  of  genius,  is  a  repe- 
tition of  a  predecessor.  Between  the  one  and 
the  other  there  lies  a  century  of  corrective  and 
advancing  culture.  Romanticism  has  not  been  in 
vain.  Stendhal  and  Taine  have  left  their  impress 
on  brains  formed  after  1870. 

The  intellectual  life  of  Remy  de  Gourmont — 
his  only  real  life — began  thirty  years  ago.  His 
first  book,  Merlette,  was  published  in  1886.  That 
was  the  time  of  the  beginnings  of  Symbolism. 
He  was  at  once  convinced  of  the  importance  of 
that  movement,  which  was  so  long  berated  by  the 
critics,  and  is  now  finding  a  little  affectionate 
justice.  Remy  de  Gourmont  was  one  of  the  first 
of  the  Symbohst  theorists  and  poets.  As  artist 
he  worked  in  the  vanguard.  Novel,  drama,  lyric : 
he  set  himself  free;  he  sought  to  find  himself. 

I  do  not  intend  to  attempt  here  an  estimate  of 
Gourmont  as  a  creative  artist.  In  Sixtine  there 
is  new  and  fine  psychology;  in  Lilitli  there  is  a 
harmonious  luxury  of  fancy;  in  the  Pelerin  dii 
Silence  and  in  the  Proses  Moroses  there  are 
capricious    and    terrible    inventions    worthy    of 


202  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Villiers  de  I'lsle  Adam  at  his  best;  in  the  Diver- 
tissements (in  which  the  Hieroglyphics,  ex- 
amples of  the  most  artificial  Symbolism,  are 
repubhshed)  there  is  the  sensitiveness  of  a  wise 
spirit  bursting  at  times  into  poetry.  But  the 
greatness  of  Remy  de  Gourmont,  to  my  mind, 
does  not  lie  in  these  old  works  of  his. 

With  the  keenness  of  his  intelligence  and  the 
exquisite  refinement  of  his  taste,  he  succeeded  in 
creating  a  group  of  poems  which  at  first  sight 
might  be  classed  with  those  of  Mallarme.  But 
his  creative  works  will  not  stand  repeated  read- 
ing. You  miss  the  pulse  of  life  in  that  magnifi- 
cent play  of  words,  cleverly  sought  out  and 
cleverly  strung  together.  In  his  prose  works, 
even  in  those  of  artistic  character,  the  best  pas- 
sages are  those  in  which  psychological  discoveries 
or  unusual  thoughts  are  stated  in  surprising 
form.  In  view  of  the  wideness  of  his  reading 
and  the  aristocracy  of  his  culture,  it  was  easy  for 
him  to  catch  the  methpd  of  the  trade  and  to  give 
to  his  bookish  imagination  a  certain  electric 
semblance  of  life.  But  his  genius  did  not  lie  in 
this  field.  Art  requires  intelligence,  but  it  re- 
quires something  more.  Intelligence  may  disci- 
pline and  purify  inspiration,  and  it  may  even 
imitate  it,  to  the  confusion  of  the  incompetent. 
But  it  does  not  suffice  for  the  creation  of  strong 
and  permanent  works. 

Remy  de  Gourmont  was  born  to  understand 


REMY  DE  GOURMONT  203 

and  to  enjoy.  His  famous  book  on  the  Latin 
Mystique  (1892),  almost  a  masterpiece,  revealed 
his  bent  for  criticism — understood  in  the  broadest 
sense  of  the  word  and  of  the  idea.  From  then 
on,  while  he  continued  to  write  stories  and  poems 
from  time  to  time,  his  richest  and  most  important 
books,  the  books  that  perfectly  express  him,  were 
his  books  of  criticism.  One  who  desires  to  know 
and  love  him  should  read  the  two  Livres  des 
Masques  (1896  and  1898),  UEsthetique  de  la 
Langue  Fran^aise  (1889) ,  La  Culture  des  Idees 
(1900),  Le  Cheinin  de  Velours  (1902),  ig  Pro- 
blemc  du  Style  ( 1902 ) ,  and  the  several  volumes  in 
which  he  collected  his  extensive  contributions  to 
the  Mercure  de  France;  the  Promenades  Litte- 
raires,  the  Promenades  Philosophiques,  the  Epi- 
logues, the  Dialogues  des  Amateurs. 

Thousands  and  thousands  of  pages;  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  subjects  and  of  thoughts:  one 
motive,  one  man,  with  kindly,  mobile,  piercing 
eyes. 


m 


The  dominant  principle  of  Gourmont's  great 
inquiry  is  to  be  sought  in  the  essay  on  the  Disso- 
ciation des  idees,  in  the  book  called  La  Culture 
des  idees. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  whole  of  Gour- 
mont  is  to  be   found   in  this   passionless   dis- 


204  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

mantling  and  divorcing  of  ideas.  He  deals  in 
nuances ;  he  may  feign  to  believe,  and  to  let  him- 
self be  carried  on  by  the  regular  and  accepted 
currents.  But  the  secret  of  his  liberating  power 
lies  precisely  in  that  delicate  virtuosity  which 
applies  itself  to  the  decomposition  of  thoughts 
that  are  apparently  simple,  to  the  separation  of 
pairs  which  had  been  thought  indissoluble,  to  the 
reestablishment  of  harmonies  and  relationships 
between  ideas  which  had  been  regarded  as 
heterogeneous  and  distant,  to  the  search  for  bits 
of  truth  amid  the  refuse  of  prejudice,  to  the 
gentle  denuding  of  the  most  solemn  truths,  re- 
vealing, to  startled  eyes,  the  bare  bones  of  con- 
tradiction. There  is  in  his  work  a  continual 
testing  and  experimenting;  a  knocking  with  the 
knuckles  to  find  out  what  is  empty  and  what  is 
full;  a  search  this  way  and  that  to  discover  the 
multiform  paths  of  existence;  a  sounding  of  the 
stagnant  wells  of  life  and  of  the  troubled  seas 
of  philosophy  to  find  a  sunken  fragment,  a  lonely 
island.  There  is  a  turning  and  tossing  on  the 
pillow  of  doubt;  a  tenacious  and  joyous  effort 
toward  elemental  reality  (a  reality  ignoble,  to 
be  sure,  but  sincere) ;  a  polygonal  assault  upon 
the  strongest  fortresses  of  scientific  and  moral 
and  metaphysical  religion;  a  mania  for  examin- 
ing, elucidating,  purifying;  and,  finally,  a  de- 
light, at  times  merely  sterile,  in  giving  utterly 
free  play  to  an  intelhgence  that  finds  rest  and 


REMY  DE  GOURMONT  205 

satisfaction  only  in  itself,  even  though  it  be  on 
the  edge  of  the  abyss. 

And  there  are  traces  of  pleasant  dilettanteism, 
of  purposeless  irony,  of  facile  journalism,  of 
sportive  surface  literature.  Remy  de  Gourmont 
wrote  so  much — and  not  always  of  his  own  free 
will  or  for  his  own  pleasure — ^that  one  naturally 
finds  passages  which  do  not  rest  on  thought,  im- 
provisations without  structure.  But  if  one 
follows  the  main  brie  of  his  thought,  even  in  his 
fantastic  deviations,  even  in  the  weary  efforts 
of  piece-work,  one  can  trace  a  penetrating  cer- 
tainty, a  thread  woven  of  eagerly  disinterested 
meditation,  a  sad  and  personal  profundity  under 
a  surface  so  clear  that  there  seems  to  be  no  sub- 
stance beneath,  a  passionate  pursuit  of  truth 
amid  a  nomadism  that  has  the  look  of  vaga- 
bondage. And  such  traits  may  well  lead  us  to 
regard  Remy  de  Gourmont  as  one  of  the  greatest 
soldiers  and  heroes  of  pure  thought. 

Amid  the  battles,  death  has  interrupted,  but 
has  not  killed,  his  work.  The  best  spirits  of 
Europe  have  watched  it,  and  must  continue  it. 


IV 


Facts  for  those  who  want  them.  He  was  born 
in  Normandy,  in  the  Castle  of  La  Motte  at 
Bazoches-en-Houlme   (Orne),  on  the  fourth  of 


206  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

April,  1858,  of  an  old  and  noble  family  of 
painters,  engravers,  and  printers.  He  went  to 
Paris  in  1883,  and  obtained  a  position  in  the 
Bibliotheque  Nationale,  but  was  dismissed  after 
two  or  three  years  because  of  an  article — Joujou 
Patriotisme — in  which  he  proposed  an  alliance 
between  France  and  Germany.  He  was  on  the 
editorial  staff  of  the  Mercure  de  France,  for 
which  he  wrote  to  his  last  days.  Before  the  war 
he  had  created  a  magnificent  type  of  the  Philis- 
tine, M.  Croquant.  When  I  saw  him  for  the 
first  time,  in  1906,  he  gave  me  the  impression  of 
a  weary  friar  smothered  in  books,  with  two  great 
vivid  eyes  and  a  thick-lipped  mouth.  I  saw  him 
for  the  last  time  in  1914,  at  the  Cafe  de  Flore, 
on  the  Boulevard  Saint  Germain,  with  his  friend 
Apollinaire.  He  had  been  very  sick,  and  could 
hardly  speak.  A  sort  of  lupus  disfigured  one 
side  of  his  face,  but  he  kept  up  his  thinking  and 
his  writing  with  a  marvelous  and  obstinate  cour- 
age. An  article  every  day  for  La  France;  a 
dialogue  every  fortnight  for  the  Mercure. 

In  Italy  he  ought  to  be  well  known.  He  wrote 
for  several  Italian  reviews:  for  the  Rassegna 
Internazionale ,  the  Marzocco  and  Lacerba  of 
Florence,  and  for  the  Flegrea  of  Naples.  Sem 
Benelli  wrote  of  him  in  the  Emporium,  Giuseppe 
Vorluni  in  the  Flegrea. 

Today  the  troubles  of  the  world  are  leading  us 
back  to  religion  and  to  humility,  and  Remy  de 


REMY  DE  GOURMONT  207 

Gourmont  might  seem  to  have  outlived  his  time. 
But  his  time  would  have  returned.  And  it  will 
return. 

Every  death  is  a  summons  for  payment.  All 
those  who  knew  him  should  pay  their  debts  of 
affection.    This  is  the  beginning  of  my  tribute. 


XV 

ARDENGO  SOFFICI  ^ 


Ardengo  Soffici,  born  in  1879  at  Rignano  on 
the  Arno,  now  a  second  lieutenant  in  an  infantry- 
battalion,  is  one  of  the  most  singular,  most  novel, 
and  most  perfect  writers  of  the  present  day.  In 
1905,  when  he  came  back  from  France  to  become 
again  an  Italian  and  a  writer,  I  was  alone  in 
recognizing  his  excellence.  There  are  many  to- 
day who  share  in  that  recognition,  and  the  num- 
ber will  steadily  increase. 

Soffici  did  not  find  himself  till  he  was  nearly 
thirty,  but  he  will  endure  the  longer — as  is  the 
case  with  all  those  who  have  not  wasted  their 
energies  in  the  disordered  precocities  of  youth. 
He  has  already  won  a  place,  and  a  high  place, 
in  painting  and  in  poetry. 

He  is  extraordinarily  versatile.  I  have  seen 
him  cover  walls  with  frescoes,  paint  earthenware 
vases,  carve  wood,  emboss  leather,  help  a  printer 
to  set  up  difficult  passages  in  his  "lyric  com- 

*  Written  d  propos  of  Soffici's  Bif%zf -{- 18,  Florence,   1915. 
208 


ARDENGO  SOFFICI  209 

pounds,"  imitate  still-life  groups  on  sheets  of 
cardboard  with  bits  of  newspapers,  scissors  and 
paste,  dash  off  newspaper  articles  and  pages  of 
a  diary  while  at  the  cafe,  and  explain  the  mys- 
teries of  difficult  poems  and  paintings,  with  a 
witty  eloquence,  to  the  hardest  heads. 

At  times  he  is  the  most  refined  lyi'ist  who  has 
ever  interwoven  foreign  and  Italian  words;  at 
times  he  is  the  brilliant  painter  who  with  a  few 
strokes  on  a  sheet  of  blue  paper  creates  for  you 
a  world  of  pure  metaphysical  form ;  then  the  ex- 
act and  brilliant  raconteur  who  compresses  a 
whole  romance  into  half  a  column  or  enlarges  a 
village  anecdote  to  the  dimensions  of  an  epic; 
then  the  clear,  lucid,  persuasive  interpreter  who 
plays  with  theories  as  a  Japanese  entertainer 
plays  with  fans,  who  condenses  the  most  para- 
doxical abstractions  into  transparent  para- 
graphs; then  at  last  the  elegant  jongleur  who 
between  one  breath  and  the  next  fuses  the  mar- 
vels of  earth,  sky,  and  sea  in  a  pyrotechnic  dis- 
play of  brilliant  magic. 

Thus  in  appearance  he  seems  at  first  sight  a 
disdainful  and  distinguished  gentleman  balanc- 
ing the  pyramids  of  the  absolute  on  the  smoke 
of  his  cigarettes;  then  he  reveals  the  drawn  and 
clouded  face  of  a  Baudelaire;  then  you  take  him 
for  a  substantial  Tuscan  countryman  deeply 
rooted  in  his  flowery  soil,  hale  and  hearty  with  a 
festive  sobriety;  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  tui*ns 


210  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

out  to  be  a  cosmopolitan  dandy,  expert  in  all  the 
refinements  of  many  capitals.  There  are  days 
when  his  serious,  clerical  face  gives  you  the  im- 
pression of  a  fanatic  friar  ready  to  die  for  his 
faith ;  and  there  are  days  when  he  suggests  a  gay 
and  acrobatic  Pierrot.  He  may  play  the  sub- 
verter  of  tradition,  mocking  old  ways  more 
cruelly  than  any  futurist;  and  the  next  day  he 
will  make  you  see  the  beauty  and  the  fineness  of 
a  sentence  of  Manzoni  or  a  line  of  Leopardi  as 
no  professional  man  of  letters  will  ever  do. 

The  secret  of  his  charm  lies  in  the  changing 
wealth  of  his  many  aspects.  He  is  at  the  same 
time  an  aristocrat  and  a  man  of  the  people,  a 
Tuscan  of  the  Valdarno  and  a  Parisian,  a  theo- 
rist and  a  lyrist,  a  devotee  and  a  libertine,  a  fan- 
atic and  a  dilettante,  profound  and  transparent. 
Like  the  clear  water  of  the  Ambra  which  runs  by 
his  home,  his  polytheistic  sensitiveness  mirrors 
the  infinite  variety  of  the  world,  and  renders  it 
more  delicate  and  more  beautiful. 


n 


But  in  all  this  lively  transformation  of  the 
spirit  one  quality  remains  dominant.  Ardengo 
Soffici  is  at  all  times,  and  beyond  all  else,  an 
artist.  An  artist  when  he  tells  of  others,  when 
he  tells  of  himself,  when  he  amuses  himself  by 


ARDENGO  SOFFICI  211 

firing  verbal  rockets  or  playing  practical  jokes, 
when  he  paints  or  criticizes  painting  or  phi- 
losophizes about  painting.  He  may  take  part  in 
pohtics — he  was  active,  for  instance,  in  the  cam- 
paign for  intervention — but  he  always  sees  the 
map  and  the  war  with  an  artist's  eye,  and  his 
affections  go  out  to  the  land  that  has  given  him 
the  richest  spiritual  and  artistic  gifts. 

Deep  in  the  heart  of  this  skeptic  there  is  one 
faith:  art.  Behind  the  melancholy  of  this  pes- 
simist there  is  one  joy:  art.  In  other  men  he 
esteems  only  intelligence,  and  for  him  intelli- 
gence means  the  achievement  of  art  or  at  least 
the  understanding  of  art.  Even  in  life  he  seeks 
that  intellectual  or  physical  refinement  which 
after  all  is  art.  Even  in  poverty  and  in  hunger 
you  would  find  him  ready  to  see  and  to  catch  the 
picturesque  or  the  comic  or  the  colorful  aspect 
of  his  ill  luck,  and  to  turn  it  into  a  marvelous 
page  in  his  memoirs. 

This  characteristic,  the  very  spinal  column  of 
his  being,  is  rarer  nowadays  than  Philistines 
think.  For  the  Philistine  is  prone  to  believe  that 
every  man  who  breaks  the  rectangular  habits  of 
Philistia  is  an  artist — every  drawing-teacher, 
every  dauber  with  disheveled  hair,  every  third- 
rate  journalist.  But  the  true  and  complete 
artist — the  lyrist,  in  short,  whether  he  expresses 
himself  in  signs,  in  colors,  or  in  words — is  the 
rarest  creature  in  the  whole  world.    Few,  indeed, 


212  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

are  those  who  live  from  morning  to  night  ready- 
to  see  impartially  and  to  express  with  utter  truth. 
Among  these  few  Soffici  is  one  of  the  most  for- 
tunate. Free  and  alone,  a  man  of  few  needs, 
accustomed  to  a  simple,  wandering  life,  poverty 
has  not  defeated  him,  obscurity  has  not  discour- 
aged him.  He  has  always  found  as  much  love 
and  friendship  as  he  needed,  and  the  world  is  so 
large,  so  complicated,  so  magnificent,  so  varie- 
gated, warm,  and  sonorous,  that  he  has  never 
lacked  for  pleasure.  A  bit  of  crayon  and  a  bit 
of  paper,  and  he  is  content.  He  trained  himself 
little  by  little,  grew  silently,  stored  up  his  gains, 
was  willing  to  wait  and  meditate,  extracted  the 
essence  of  countryside  and  of  metropolis ;  and  set 
forth  at  last  fully  confident,  armed  for  any  com- 
bat, strong  enough  for  any  conquest.  He  came 
slowly,  and  late.  He  came  from  Paris,  and 
looked  as  if  he  came  from  the  country.  He  came 
late,  but  he  has  advanced  beyond  his  fellows. 
It  is  a  pleasure  and  a  good  fortune  to  be  by  his 
side. 


Ill 


I  will  not  speak  of  his  work  as  painter;  it 
would  take  too  long  to  trace  the  stages  of  his 
development,  from  his  first  Giottesque  ventures 
down  to  his  recent  fusion  of  popular  art  with 
the  discoveries  of  cubists  and  futurists — a  fusion 


ARDENGO  SOFFICI  213 

which  has  given  him  a  novel  physiognomy  of  his 
own,  at  once  Tuscan  and  cosmopolitan. 

As  a  writer  he  began  to  express  himself  in 
French  in  the  Vagabondages  lyriques  which 
came  out  between  1904*  and  1906  in  the  Plume 
and  in  the  Europe  artiste.  Toward  the  end  of 
his  long  stay  in  France,  he  sent  to  the  Leonardo 
(under  the  name  of  Stefan  Cloud)  two  or  three 
essays  in  art  criticism,  in  which,  under  the  rust 
of  lingering  ideologies,  one  could  already  per- 
ceive the  vigorous  apostle  of  modern  art  who  was 
so  soon  to  reveal  himself.  In  a  brief  polemic 
entitled  Rentree  there  appeared  already  the 
bright  color  and  the  impressionistic  freshness 
which  were  later  to  develop  in  full  consciousness 
in  the  most  successful  pages  of  the  Harlequin 
and  the  Logbook. 

In  his  first  book,  a  tiny  volume  of  a  few  score 
pages,  printed  (and  badly  printed)  in  1909,  the 
influence  of  Foscolo,  Leopardi,  and  Carlyle  is 
too  apparent.  TJie  Unknown  Tuscan  is  indeed 
dedicated  to  Didimus  Clericus,  Filippo  Ottonieri, 
and  Dr.  Teufelsdrockh.  The  contents  of  this 
book  are  but  the  floating  fragments  of  a  ship- 
wreck, the  remnants  of  a  great  pessimistic  work 
which  was  to  have  been  called  Tragedy. 

When  the  publication  of  the  Voce  began, 
Soffici  set  out  with  a  will  to  acquaint  Italy  with 
foreign  art,  and  with  French  art  in  particular. 
His  essays  on  Cezanne,  Degas,  Gauguin,  Renoir, 


214  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Rousseau,  Picasso,  and  Braque  are  marvelous 
examples  of  loving  intelligence  and  effective 
evocation.  To  the  same  period  belongs  his  gen- 
erous and  successful  campaign  on  behalf  of  the 
great  Italian  sculptor,  Medardo  Rosso,  which 
culminated  in  1911  in  the  Florentine  Exposition 
of  the  works  of  Rosso  and  of  the  French  impres- 
sionists. 

At  the  same  time  his  literary  activity  was  in- 
creasing. His  book  on  Rimbaud  does  not  con- 
tent the  latest  connoisseurs,  though  it  was  Soffici 
who  made  known  to  them  the  existence  of  the 
prodigious  creator  of  the  Illuminations;  but  it  is 
none  the  less  one  of  the  best  intellectual  biog- 
raphies of  an  exceptional  figure,  and  it  served  to 
reveal  the  name,  the  work,  and  the  greatness  of 
the  first  pure  lyrist  of  France  and  of  Europe. 

In  Lemmomo  Boreo  Soffici  began  a  sort  of 
satirical  romance  of  adventure  in  which  a  con- 
temporary and  indigenous  Don  Quixote  sets  out, 
accompanied  by  force  (in  the  person  of  Zac- 
cagna)  and  astuteness  (in  the  person  of  Spillo), 
to  chastise  the  rabble  and  to  speak  his  mind  to 
fools.  But  the  critics  did  not  like  the  beginning 
of  the  work;  and  the  moralists  failed  to  see  the 
beauty  of  certain  pages,  and  spun  theories  as  to 
a  thesis  which  did  not  exist.  Soffici  was  dis- 
couraged, and  poor  Lemmonio's  career  was  cut 
short  at  the  end  of  the  first  volume. 

This   partial  defeat  did  not  lead   Soffici   to 


ARDENGO  SOFFICI  215 

abandon  fiction  and  poetry.  Two  or  three  years 
later  appeared  his  Harlequin,  a  collection  of  mis- 
cellaneous articles  which  had  been  published  in 
the  Voce  or  in  the  Riviera  Ligure.  This  volume 
and  the  Logbook  show  Soffici  at  his  best,  and  are 
among  the  most  precious  works  of  recent  litera- 
ture. 

Even  today,  perhaps,  there  is  more  of  Soffici 
in  the  Harlequin  than  in  any  other  book.  It  has 
an  extraordinary  felicity  and  limpidity  and 
solidity  in  color,  word,  and  image — life,  novelty, 
a  spontaneous  power,  a  clearness  that  seems  pro- 
found by  virtue  of  its  very  transparency. 

But  Soffici's  greatest  success  began  in  the  re- 
view Lacerha.  Still  moved  by  his  old  eagerness 
for  the  fragment,  the  brief  note,  the  regis- 
tration of  autobiographical  experience,  Soffici 
began  to  publish  a  sort  of  diary,  sentimental  and 
philosophic,  pictorial  and  poetic,  which  he  called 
his  Logbook.  At  first  it  attracted  little  atten- 
tion, but  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  competent 
and  sensitive  readers  began  to  look  for  it  and  to 
enjoy  it.  Renato  Serra  was  one  of  the  first  to 
discover  its  great  beauty,  and  had  the  courage 
to  state  his  admiration  publicly.  Soffici,  who  in 
his  painting  had  recently  turned  to  futurism, 
became  popular,  at  least  among  connoisseurs  and 
radicals.  People  began  to  read  his  other  books 
as  well;  and  within  a  year's  time  he  had  come  to 
be  the  fashionable  writer,  the  favorite  both  of 


216   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

experts  and  of  beginners.  When  the  Logbook 
appeared  as  a  vohime,  it  proved  to  have  lost  noth- 
ing in  interest  or  in  freshness.  Its  last  sections 
foretokened  the  compHcated  structure  of  the 
later  "lyric  compounds." 

The  Logbook  was  not  his  only  contribution  to 
Lacerba.  As  in  the  Voce  he  had  been  the  cham- 
pion and  the  theorist  of  impressionism,  so  in 
Lacerba  he  was  the  apostle  and  the  exponent  of 
cubism.  His  limpid,  axiomatic  articles,  now 
published  in  book  form,  are  the  best  European 
treatment  of  the  most  daring  experimental 
schools  of  painting. 

In  Lacerba  too,  from  1914  on,  and  in  the  VocCj 
he  published  the  greater  part  of  those  "lyi-ic 
compounds"  and  "lyric  simultaneities"  which 
have  recently  come  out,  under  the  strange  title 
Biflzf  +  18,  in  a  strange  sort  of  album  which  has 
for  its  cover  a  medley  of  posters  colored  by 
Soffici  in  the  brightest  blues,  greens,  yellows,  and 
reds  that  are  to  be  found  in  Italy  now  that  the 
importation  of  German  dyes  has  ceased. 


IV 


The  book  is  limited  to  three  hundred  copies, 
costs  five  lire,  and  is  published  in  war-time:  con- 
sequently few  will  read  it.  And  yet  this  bizarre 
volume,  which  even  in  the  extravagances  of  its 


ARDENGO  SOFFICI  217 

typography  expresses  the  modernist  and  mech- 
anistic will  of  Soffici  at  play  with  the  most 
sumptuous  poetic  counterpoint,  will  remain  one 
of  the  most  significant  and  vitally  important 
works  of  our  literature. 

This  poetry  of  Soffici,  which  seeks  to  bind  with 
the  invisible  silk  of  an  intense  and  nervous 
Pindarism  the  impressions  which  from  all  the 
universe  converge  to  a  brain  as  luminous  and  as 
fiery  as  a  lens  of  Archimedes — this  poetry  did 
not  come  into  being  all  at  once.  It  had  been 
prepared  for  slow^ly  and  gradually  by  Soffici 
himself  and  by  others.  But  it  is  only  in  this  book 
that  Soffici  reaches  full  self-consciousness  and 
affirms  himself  in  clear  and  definitive  utterances 
which  give  him  the  right  to  be  listened  to,  dis- 
cussed, and  recognized.  Like  all  the  true  poets 
of  this  blase  and  exacting  age,  Soffici  demands 
and  seeks  the  pure  lyric,  the  lyric  freed  from 
anecdote,  from  narrative,  from  external  motives, 
from  eloquence,  from  description.  Baudelaire 
and  Rimbaud  are  the  starting  point,  but  the 
terminus  is  Soffici.  No  longer  the  proud  and 
dolorous  Parnassianism  of  the  Fleurs  du  mat,  no 
longer  the  psychological  and  fantastic  mythology 
of  the  Saison  en  enfer.  Here  at  last  poetry  is 
sound,  color,  form,  word,  a  complex  reflected 
image,  an  immense  net  of  suggestions  and  rem- 
iniscences— freedom  within  an  infinite  wealth  of 
forms  and  shadows.     Soffici,  with  the  sensitive 


218  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

spirit  of  the  liberated  lyrist,  sets  himself  in  the 
centre  of  the  world,  and  so  manipulates  rays  and 
gems  and  lights  as  to  construct  a  super-universe 
more  spiritual,  more  compact,  more  subtle,  and 
more  gorgeous  than  the  real  universe.  From  one 
single  point  issue  rays  which  on  numberless  paths 
meet  memories  and  beauties,  and  imprison  and 
illumine  them  with  a  sense  of  totality  deeply 
realized  and  enjoyed:  just  as  a  ray  of  sunlight 
turns  the  base  dust  of  the  street  into  a  whirl  of 
golden  points.  Without  recourse  to  isolated 
words,  without  availing  himself,  save  rarely,  of 
typographical  trickery,  SofRci  succeeds  in  ren- 
dering the  transparent  and  tremendous  enigma 
of  the  visible  world  with  expressions  and  sugges- 
tions which  are  absolutely  novel  to  Italian  poetry. 
To  understand  these  "lyric  compounds"  one 
must  read  and  reread  them;  to  realize  their  im- 
portance we  must  wait  for  years,  perhaps  for 
decades.  I  am  not  a  literary  critic  by  profession, 
and  no  interpretation  of  mine  could  take  the 
place  of  direct  examination.  I  have  been  a  friend 
and  comrade  of  SofRci  for  a  dozen  years;  and  I 
am  glad  to  have  borne  witness  for  him  here  as  a 
man  who  admires  him  because  he  understands 
him. 


XVI 
SWIFT  ^ 

Jonathan  Swift  is  one  of  the  four  greatest 
writers  of  England  (Shakespeare  and  Carlyle 
are  of  the  same  company:  the  reader  may  choose 
the  fourth  to  suit  himself) . 

Gulliver's  Travels  is  one  of  those  few  books, 
pleasant  or  unx^leasant,  light  or  profound,  which 
may  be  read  and  reread  at  all  ages,  even  when 
other  books  have  been  exhausted  and  laid  aside. 

Upon  the  basis  of  these  axiomatic  premises, 
we  must  necessarily  thank  the  translator  and  the 
publisher  who  have  brought  out  a  new  Italian 
edition  of  Swift's  masterpiece.  The  volume  is 
none  too  elegant,  but  it  is  not  repulsive;  the 
translation  is  by  no  means  perfect  (I  suspect 
that  it  is  not  based  directly  on  the  English  text) , 
but  it  is  at  least  complete,  or  nearly  complete. 
Italian  publishers  have  usually  printed  only  the 
first  two  of  the  four  parts  of  the  Travels,  since 
the  first  two  are  the  parts  that  are  popular 
among  children,  amusement  seekers,  and  super- 

*  Written  A  propos  of  A.  Valori's  version  of  Oidlwer's  Travels  t 
I  viaggi  di  Oulliver,  Genoa,  1913. 
219 


220  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

ficial  readers.  Of  the  lands  to  which  Gulliver 
journeyed,  the  only  one  that  is  popular  and 
famous  among  us  is  Lilliput.  Brobdingnag  is  a 
close  second.  But  we  have  only  the  vaguest 
notions  of  Laputa,  Balnibarbi,  Luggnagg,  and 
Glubbdubdrib,  and  we  are  quite  willing  to  leave 
unvisited  the  land  of  the  terrible  Yahoos.  But 
the  last  two  parts  are  really  more  characteristic 
than  the  first  two:  their  omission  in  previous 
Italian  editions  is  then  another  instance  of  the 
fact  that  excisions  are  usually  ill-judged. 

The  translator  expresses  his  regret  that  the 
work  "has  always  been  so  slightly  and  so  inac- 
curately known  and  so  grotesquely  interpreted  in 
Italy.  Thanks  to  the  absurdity  of  publishers 
and  of  the  public  G-uUivers  Travels  has  been 
regarded  as  a  book  for  children,  a  harmless  fan- 
tastic romance  founded  upon  an  idea  that  is 
clever  but  superficial."  The  translator  is  right 
so  far  as  modern  Italy  is  concerned,  but  for  the 
sake  of  justice  he  should  have  recalled  the  fact 
that  in  the  eighteenth  century,  even  before  the 
death  of  Swift,  Italian  men  of  letters  knew  him 
and  admired  him  as  a  satirist  and  morahst,  and 
not  by  any  means  as  an  author  of  extravaganzas 
for  children.  Algarotti,  for  example,  cited  him 
often,  and  called  him  the  modern  Lucian. 
Baretti  paid  him  due  esteem,  though  he  once 
wrote  in  the  Frusta  that  "half  of  Swift's  fancy 
was  always  covered  with  filth."    Albergati  and 


SWIFT  221 

Cesarotti  were  fond  of  quoting  him;  Bettinelli 
imitated  him  in  one  of  his  poems;  and  in  1770 
Giuseppe  Pelh,  the  Dantist,  introduced  him  as 
one  of  the  characters  in  his  Dialogues  of  the 
Dead.  So  then  Itahan  men  of  letters  of  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  ago,  when  there  were  no  reviews 
of  modern  philology,  and  no  volumes  on  com- 
parative literature,  were  better  acquainted  with 
certain  foreign  authors  than  are  the  Italian 
writers  of  today.  And  I  therefore  share  the 
translator's  hope  that  this  new  edition  may  help 
to  win  for  Gulliver's  Travels  its  rightful  place 
among  the  most  famous  works  of  European 
literature. 

It  is,  without  question,  of  the  highest  rank. 
Swift's  book,  like  most  of  the  masterpieces  of 
European  imagination,  is  an  adventurous  jour- 
ney  which  jiff  ard&_a_.pretext  for  a  critical  survey 
of  humanity.  So  too  the  Odyssey,  the  Divine 
Comedy,  Don  Quivote,  and  Faust  are  marvelous 
journeys  and  at  the  same  time  satires  on  man- 
kind. The  books  I  have  named  are  but  the 
greatest.  The  mere  titles  of  those  of  the  second 
rank  would  cover  a  page.  In  all  these  books  we 
find  the  same  scheme  and  the  same  design,  varied 
according  to  variations  in  time  and  in  genius — 
a  review  of  human  life  (in  most  cases  a  sad  and 
bitter  review)  effected  by  means  of  imaginary 
experiences  which  may  be  sublime  or  fascinating 
or  ridiculous. 


222   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Of    these    fantastic    "reports    on    mankind" 
Swift's    is    one    of    the    most    extraordinary. 
The    Odyssey   moves    in    the    world    of   pagan 
mythology;    the   Divine    Comedy    is    based   on 
Christian  mythology;  Faust  mixes  all  mytholo- 
gies; Don  Quiojote  remains  within  the  Spanish 
reality  of  every  day.    Gulliver  s  Travels  achieves 
the  marvelous  without  recourse  to  mythology, 
and  transcends  Enghsh  reality  without  falling 
into  absurdity.    All  the  author  needs  is  a  simple 
(premise,  a  mere  quantitative  alteration  at  the 
j  start — men  of  extraordinary  littleness,  men  of 
I  extraordinary  hugeness,  horses  of  extraordinary 
\  wisdom — and  all  the  rest  proceeds  with  the  most 
'  orthodox  logic,  with  no  trace  of  specific  improba- 
bility, without  inventive  effort.     We  are  within 
the  field  of  the  incredible,  yet  we  are  within  the 
field  of  reality.     Strange  happenings  seem  nor- 
mal, madness  assumes  the  forms  of  reason.  Just 
a  difference  in  nature,  just  a  shift  of  dimensions, 
and  we  have  with  the  utmost  naturalness  the  most 
unnatural  of  worlds.    It  is  the  classic  method  for 
the  creation  of  the  extraordinary,  a  method  to  be 
resumed  a  century  later  by  Poe  for  his  travels 
into  the  realms  of  mystery. 

By  thus  reducing  absurdity  to  the  minimum 
and  gaining  in  consequence  the  maximum  of 
effect.  Swift  succeeded  in  making  Gulliver's 
Travels  one  of  the  classic  documents  of  man's 
scorn  for  man.    The  sharp  and  cynical  spirit  of 


SWIFT  223 

the  Dean  of  St.  Pafe  trick's  vented  itself  within 
the  limits  of  this  ingenious  device  by  mocldng 
and  humiliating  men  ii:  all  the  attitudes  and  occu- 
pations of  their  lives.  Never  has  an  indictment 
of  the  cowardice,  the  weakness,  and  the  foolish- 
ness of  humanity  been  fiercer  or  more  complete 
than  that  contained  in  this  book  for  children. 
Those  who  believe  that  i^essimism  had  its  rise  in 
Germany  in  the  nineteenth  century  are  blind  or 
forgetful.  The  most  definitive  condemnation  of 
life  as  we  live  it  was  uttered  in  England  in  the 
year  1721.  Even  before  Swift's  time  many  of 
the  things  whereof  men  boast,  wherein  they  glory, 
had  been  reproached  and  bitterly  attacked. 
There  had  been  elegiac  laments  and  sarcastic 
demolitions.  But  no  one  had  extended  such 
treatment  to  the  whole  human  race,  no  one  had 
said  these  things  with  such  force,  with  such  re- 
fined cruelty.  Dr.  Gulliver,  surgeon  and  aver- 
age man,  seeks  in  appearance  to  maintain  the 
dignity  and  the  greatness  of  his  species,  and  yet 
the  most  terrific  accusations  emerge  from  his 
apologetic  efforts. 

Lemuel  Gulliver  is  honest,  intelligent,  edu- 
cated, good-looking;  he  can  reason,  he  is  a  man 

^  of  feeling;  and  yet  his  invisible  enemy  condemns 
him  to  be  a  toy  in  the  hands  of  giants,  and  to 
resemble  the  disgusting  Yahoos,  slaves  of  the 

_4^wise  horses.     After  we  have  seen  our  fooHsh 
littleness  reflected  in  the  Lilliputians,  he  reveals 


224  FOUR  ANP  TWE\^TY  MINDS 

us  as  still  more  little  by  pu  :ting  one  of  us  amid 
the  giants  of  Brobdingnag  In  Laputa  and  in 
Balnibarbi  we  find  our  madnesses  enlarged  and 
deformed  as  in  a  convex  mirror.  In  the  island 
of  Glubbdubdrib  we  find  our  past ;  in  the  land  of 
the  Houyhnhnms  we  find  our  foul  bestiality. 
Nothing  escapes  Swift's  black  hatred.  Political 
divisions  are  no  more  important  than  the  division 
between  those  who  wear  high  heels  and  those  who 
wear  low  heels;  religious  divisions  are  like  the 
division  between  those  who  crack  eggs  on  the 
side  and  those  who  crack  them  at  the  end ;  minis- 
ters of  state  win  their  positions  by  proficiency 
in  dancing  on  the  tight-rope.  Kings  are  proud 
and  pitiless  in  proportion  to  their  weakness. 
Woman's  beauty  appears  full  of  stains  and  ugli- 
ness when  it  is  magnified.  All  that  to  us  seems 
glorious  and  majestic  would  be  but  a  pygmy's 
farce  to  beings  greater  and  wiser  than  we — as  to 
the  King  of  Brobdingnag,  who  observed : 

"How  contemptible  a  thing  was  human  grandeur,  which 
could  be  mimicked  by  such  diminutive  insects  as  I:  and 
yet/'  says  he,  "I  dare  engage,  these  creatures  have  their 
titles  and  distinctions  of  honour;  they  contrive  little  nests 
and  burrows,  that  they  call  houses  and  cities;  they  make  a 
figure  in  dress  and  equipage;  they  love,  they  fight,  they 
dispute,  they  cheat,  they  betray." 

But  with  the  hairs  of  this  king's  beard,  Gulli- 
ver makes   himself   a  comb!    The   same   king, 


SWIFT  225 

however,  by  way  of  unconscious  vengeance, 
proves  in  a  twinkling  the  defects  of  parliamen- 
tary government,  touches  the  sore  spots  of  Eng- 
lish history  and  administration,  and  concludes 
that  the  majority  of  Gulliver's  fellow-citizens 
form  "the  most  pernicious  race  of  little  odious 
vermin,  that  nature  ever  suffered  to  crawl  upon 
^the  surface  of  the  earth." 

Nothing  is  spared  in  the  implacable  review  of 
our  miseries:  neither  our  legislation  nor  our 
philosophy  nor  our  desire  to  make  war  and  to 
conquer.  In  Laputa  and  in  the  academy  of 
Lagado  /our  metaphysicians  and  our  scientists, 
our  schemers  and  our  dreamers,  are  mocked  and 
laughed  to  scorn.  In  Glubbdubdrib  the  lies  of 
our  historians  and  the  weaknesses  of  our  ances- 
tors stand  revealed.  And  in  the  land  of  horses 
the  whole  human  race  is  pilloried  and  unspeak- 
ably humbled  in  the  image  of  the  Yahoos — wild, 
vicious,  foul,  malignant  creatures  who  yet  pos- 
sess a  terrible  resemblance  (if  the  veils  and  paints 
and  powders  of  civilization  be  disregarded)  to 
the  beings  that  enjoy  the  full  benefits  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

Swift's  book  does  not  mount  toward  redemp- 
tion. It  makes  no  concessions  to  optimism.  His 
pitiless  hatred  for  humanity  increases  from  chap- 
ter to  chapter,  even  to  the  final  insult.  Along 
the  way  everything  has  been  denied,  everything 
has  been  stripped  of  glamor:  politics,  religion. 


e 


226  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

morals,  valor,  knowledge,  thought,  history, 
civilization.  It  remains  only  for  the  poor  Yahoos, 
naked  and  unmasked,  to  reveal  us  at  the  last  as 
we  really  are :  mere  ajDes,  wild,  stupid,  evil.  Thus 
ends  this  marvelous  and  grievous  outburst  of  as 
unprejudiced  a  spirit  as  ever  lived  and  suffered 
in  this  world. 

Swift  is  not  only  a  simple,  clear,  and  clean-cut 
writer:  he  is  original.  Macaulay  himself,  though 
he  points  out  a  resemblance  between  a  passage 
in  one  of  Addison's  Latin  poems  and  a  passage 
in  the  voyage  to  Lilliput,  recognizes  that  Swift 
owes  exceptionally  little  to  his  predecessors. 
There  are  stories  of  giants  and  pygmies  in  popu- 
lar mythology,  to  be  sure ;  but  the  idea  of  making 
use  of  these  differences  of  stature  to  proclaim 
and  represent  the  tragi-comedy  of  human  life 
was  Swift's  own.  There  had  been  earlier  ac- 
counts of  imaginary  voyages  to  strange  lands; 
but  no  author  had  succeeded,  as  Swift  was  to 
do,  in  fusing  intense  satire  with  amusing  narra- 
tive. Before  the  time  of  Swift  there  had  been 
Utopias  wherein  more  perfect  men  had  framed 
wise  regulations  for  their  common  life;  but  in 
Gulliver  s  Travels,  after  the  voyage  to  Lilliput, 
there  is  scarcely  a  trace  of  the  "cities  of  the  sun." 
The  one  perfect  society  is  that  of  the  illiterate 
horses:  a  bitter  mockery  of  our  pride  as  literary 
bipeds. 

Yet  human  vanity,  never  content,  has  sought 


SWIFT  227 

to  turn  this  book — with  all  its  strangeness,  sad- 
ness, and  profundity — into  a  humorous  work,  a 
book  for  children.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  chance 
that  the  very  pages  that  make  children  laugh  are 
those  that  may  well  bring  tears  of  shame  to  the 
rest  of  us. 


XVII 
CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO 


No:  this  indefatigable  woman  shall  not  disap- 
pear from  the  literary  scene  without  a  word  of 
farewell,  without  an  expression  of  deep  grati- 
tude. For  once,  at  least,  I  will  play  the  cavalier, 
unworthy  though  I  am.  I  alone  will  be  mourner, 
critic,  and  eulogist.  I  will  sacrifice  myself.  I 
shall  have  no  rivals,  but  my  tribute  will  not  be 
venal  or  ready-made. 

Not  one  of  the  all  too  many  archimandrites  of 
that  historical,  anecdotal,  impressionistic,  pure, 
impure,  or  philosophic  criticism  who  are  to  be 
found  in  the  generous  breadths  of  this  our  Italy 
will  take  pen  in  hand  and  dispense  ink  and  judg- 
ment to  glorify  the  prolific  and  industrious 
novelist  recently  borne  off  by  pneumonia  from 
the  affection  of  her  family,  the  curiosity  of  movie 
audiences,  and  the  faithful  admiration  of  the  mul- 
titude. Such  silence  is  unjust;  and  I,  like  Cato 
the   Younger,   have   a   liking  for   losf   causes. 

228 


CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO        229 

Though  the  critics  hold  their  peace,  I  will  glorify 
thee,  O  Carolina  Invernizio,  lost  forever! 

A  certain  serious  periodical,  the  ne  plus  ultra 
of  serious  periodicals — suffice  it  to  say  that  it  is 
printed  in  my  sweet  city,  only  a  few  steps  from 
that  fair  San  Giovanni  in  which  Dante  and  the 
undersigned  were  baptized — this  ultra-serious 
periodical,  to  which  Carducci  once  contributed, 
deigns  to  inform  its  readers,  at  the  end  of  the 
few  lines  in  which  the  death  of  the  novelist  is 
reported,  that  "the  productivity  of  Carolina 
Invernizio  was  enormous,  and  brought  a  fortune 
to  her  publishers,  but  will  certainly  not  suffice  to 
win  a  lasting  fame  for  the  deceased,  who  was, 
however,  an  excellent  wife  and  a  woman  of 
simple  ways."  Oh,  the  envious  certainties  of  the 
anonymous!  Who  gave  thee  the  right,  thou 
scornful  prophet,  to  foretell  literary  fortunes? 
Who,  save  God  above,  can  pledge  the  memories 
of  the  future?  If  Carohna  Invernizio  had  been 
merely  an  excellent  wife  and  a  woman  of  simple 
ways,  wouldst  thou  have  deigned  to  speak  of  her, 
even  to  commemorate  her?  There  be  millions 
of  excellent  and  simple-hearted  women  in  Italy: 
thou  couldst  scarce  register  all  their  holy  and 
devout  deaths.  But  how  many  canst  thou  find 
among  them  that  have  won  the  hearts  and  the 
imaginations  of  all  Italy  and  half  America? 
that  have  created  so  many  angels  of  glistening 


230  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

perfection  and  so  many  microcosms  of  black 
wickedness  ? 

Enough  of  these  questions,  to  which  the  poor 
anonymous  necrologist  could  not  possibly  reply. 
Let  us  mount  to  better  air,  to  the  realm  of  feel- 
ing. No  man  who  has  not  devoured  Accursed 
Loves,  who  has  not  shuddered  at  Souls  of  Mire, 
who  has  not  been  stirred  by  The  Miscreant,  who 
has  not  quivered  under  The  Eternal  Chain,  who 
has  not  sympathized  with  A  Woman's  Heart, 
who  has  not  wept  for  The  Heart  of  the  Laborer, 
who  has  not  trembled  for  Dora,  the  Assassin's 
Daughter,  who  has  not  shivered  at  the  Dramas 
of  Infidelity,  who  has  not  turned  pale  before 
Thieves  of  Honor,  who  has  not  been  absorbed  in 
The  Criine  of  the  Countess,  who  has  not  been  ter- 
rified by  The  Kiss  of  the  Dead,  who  has  not  been 
entranced  by  The  Illegitimate  Daughter,  who 
has  not  followed  in  suspense  the  fate  of  The 
Accursed  Woman — no  such  man  has  the  right  to 
judge  Carolina  Invernizio.  Nor  must  we  forget 
the  hair-raising  Memoirs  of  a  Grave  Digger,  the 
pathetic  Victims  of  Love,  the  supremely  piteous 
Orphan  of  the  Ghetto,  the  atrocious  satire  of 
Faithless  Husbands,  the  spectral  synthesis  of 
Paradise  and  Hell,  the  sentimental  epic  of  Rina, 
The  Angel  of  the  Alps,  the  terrible  fantasy  of 
Satanella,  or  The  Dead  Hand. 

J'en  passe,  et  des  meilleurs.  For  our  Carolina 
certainly  had  at  least  one  of  the  signs  of  genius: 


CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO         231 

productivity.  The  lines  and  the  novels  traced  by 
that  tireless  hand  are  more  than  the  Alexandrines 
of  Victor  Hugo,  more  than  the  autos  of  Calderon. 
We  may  call  them  "flowers  and  hay,"  to  use 
Manzoni's  term;  but  hay — and  if  you  don't  be- 
lieve it,  ask  any  peasant — is  no  less  precious  than 
flowers.  It  has  its  own  fragrance,  and  it  feeds 
beasts  who  would  not  touch  lilies  and  roses.  You 
may  say  that  her  French  rival  Xavier  de  Mon- 
t^pin  had  an  equal  abundance  of  inventive 
imagination.  But  he  was  a  man,  and  a  French- 
man ;  Carolina  a  woman,  and  an  Italian. 

Among  the  women  writers  of  other  lands  the 
only  one  to  whom  she  may  fairly  be  compared  is 
Ann  Radcliffe,  authoress  of  the  terrible  Mys- 
teries of  Udolpho — and  she,  though  she  died  in 
1823,  is  still  unforgotten.  Among  Italians, 
Mastriani  alone  can  rival  the  fertihty  of  her  un- 
restrained genius.  And  yet  I  would  swear  that 
her  modern  sisters  in  fiction  regarded  her  with 
that  arrogant  scorn  of  which  women  alone  are 
capable.  Certainly  they  said  that  she  did  not 
know  how  to  write  or  to  psychologize.  But  how 
can  you  ask,  my  dear  ladies,  that  an  Italian 
woman  should  write  good,  pure,  strong  Italian 
prose?  Since  the  time  of  Alessandra  Macinghi 
Strozzi,  who  wrote  for  her  children  and  not  for 
print,  since  the  time  of  St.  Catherine -of  Siena, 
who  wrote  for  Paradise  and  not  for  this  foolish 
and  sinful  earth,  since  the  time  of  Sister  Celeste 


232  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Galilei,  who  wrote  for  her  blind  father  and  not 
for  the  publishers,  I  have  never  heard  of  any 
Italian  woman  who  knew  how  to  write  Italian. 
Surely  you  would  not  give  the  name  of  true 
Italian  prose  to  the  thin  broth  of  Matilde  Serao, 
the  surreptitious  delight  of  boarding-schools? 
Or  to  the  honest  camomile  in  which  the  venerable 
lady  who  hides  under  the  pastoral  name  of  Neera 
sets  forth  her  chaste  narratives  ?  Or  to  the  color- 
ful swoonings  of  that  pretentious  literary  dialect 
which  Grazia  Deledda  manipulates  with  a  Sar- 
dinian frankness. 

Leave  her  in  peace  then — poor  Carolina.  She 
wrote  just  as  the  words  came,  to  be  sure,  but  she 
was  always  intelligible,  and,  what  is  more,  she 
was  always  readable.  She  too,  like  her  fellow- 
citizen  Alfieri,  like  her  colleague  IManzoni,  came 
in  her  youth  to  Tuscany  to  steep  herself  in  the 
idiom  of  the  Arno.  But  the  Arno,  so  clear  and 
resplendent  when  it  gushes  forth  amid  the  chest- 
nut trees  of  Falterona,  is  so  muddy  and  greasy 
and  turbid  when  it  reaches  Florence  that  the 
beauty  of  its  idiom  is  gone.  And  the  Academy 
of  the  Crusca  in  its  Medicean  palace  is  too  high 
and  mighty  a  lady  to  receive  or  help  a  humble 
schoolma'am,  such  as  Signora  Invernizio  then 
was. 

So  then  you  must  not  seek  in  her  books  the 
full-blown  flowers  of  choice  speech  that  may  be 
gathered  from  the  hopper  of  the  dictionaries. 


CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO         233 

There  are  too  many  people  in  Italy,  from  Cap- 
tain d'Annunzio  down,  who  write  by  dint  of 
fingering  Tommaseo-Bellini.  Nor  must  you  seek 
art.  Who  now,  indeed — save  for  eight  or  nine 
desperate  lunatics — really  insists  on  pure  art? 
The  bourgeoisie,  the  proletariat,  the  people  who 
patronize  the  movies  and  the  circulating  libraries, 
the  infalhble  and  sovereign  people,  demand 
homicides,  infidelities,  gendarmes,  and  swoonings 
in  the  moonlight — they  demand  Carolina  Inver- 
nizio.  They  may  not  give  her  a  place  among  the 
approved  classic  texts.  What  of  it  ?  Neither  did 
Balzac  and  Zola  have  the  satisfaction  of  sitting 
under  the  dome  of  the  French  Academy. 

The  poverty  of  her  psychology  might  seem  to 
be  a  more  serious  matter.  But  in  this  connection 
it  may  not  be  amiss  to  sketch  a  brief  theory  of 
the  novel.  Today,  amid  the  squalor  and  decay  of 
so  many  literary  forms,  the  novel  is  nothing  more 
than  a  stake  that  serves  to  uphold  all  sorts  of 
vines.  Rousseau  began  by  putting  into  the  novel 
the  philosophy  of  sentiment;  Walter  Scott  and 
]Manzoni  threw  in  raw  chunks  of  political  and 
civic  history;  Dumas  jils,  the  mulatto,  added 
social  theses;  Flaubert,  archaeology;  Weisman, 
Sienkiewicz  and  Fogazzaro,  Christian  apolo- 
getics; Zola,  treatises  on  medical  science  and 
sociology;  Bourget,  the  psychological  problems 
of  souls  with  an  income  of  fifty  thousand  francs; 
Barres,   the   battles   of   contemporary   politics; 


234  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

d'Annunzio,  aesthetic  exegeses,  lyric  descriptions, 
and  the  history  of  art.  It  is  too  much.  The 
novel  should  be  a  novel;  that  is,  a  narrative  of 
strange  and  curious  events,  a  story  of  unusual 
happenings.  The  novel  of  adventure  is  the  only 
genuine,  legitimate  novel.  Let  him  who  wants 
the  history  of  art  write  books  on  the  history  of 
art ;  let  him  who  wants  religion  write  on  theology ; 
let  him  who  wants  psychology  turn  to  psychologi- 
cal studies  and  manuals.  Why  should  the  novel, 
the  very  type  that  has  least  right  to  bore  the 
reader,  be  compelled  to  serve  as  the  receptacle, 
the  vehicle,  the  substitute  for  all  these  other 
sciences,  arts,  and  disciplines,  beautiful  in  them- 
selves, no  doubt,  most  worthy  and  most  useful, 
but  utterly  unrelated  to  romance?  There  is  no 
psychologizing  in  the  Tristan,  the  best  and  most 
popular  novel  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  favorite 
novel  of  modern  times,  the  Don  Quixote,  is 
wholly  a  story  of  adventure,  and  does  not  pause 
for  the  analysis  of  souls.  The  first  European 
novel,  the  Odyssey,  is  an  unbroken  sequence  of 
events,  without  a  trace  of  introspection.  The 
department-store  novel  is  a  discovery  of  modern 
times.  The  novel  which  seeks  to  inform,  instead 
of  bringing  pleasure,  is  an  outcome  of  the  cor- 
ruption of  the  genre.  The  knowing,  overladen, 
mixed  and  composite  novel  is  faithless  to  its  an- 
cestry and  its  purposes.  The  great  narrators 
— let  us  say  Boccaccio  and  Maupassant,  to  keep 


CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO         235 

the  ancients  and  the  moderns  on  even  terms — 
did  not  betray  their  art.  They  tell  of  events, 
sad  or  ridiculous,  and  seek  no  further.  They  do 
not  spin  psychology.  That  they  leave  to  their 
readers  or  their  critics  or  the  professional  psy- 
chologists. 

This  simple  truth  seems  to  have  flashed  upon 
the  simple  mind  of  Carolina  Invernizio  when  in 
her  early  youth  she  undertook  the  writing  of  her 
first  novel.  She  was  well  aware  that  a  novel  is 
written  to  amuse,  and  is  read  for  the  sake  of 
amusement.  So  then  it  calls  for  many  facts,  for 
surprising  and  intricate  combinations,  for  fancy 
unrestrained,  for  plenty  of  action,  for  a  clever 
plot  in  which  the  splendor  of  virtue  and  the 
shadow  of  vice  shall  find  their  place.  Her 
readers,  and  especially  her  feminine  readers,  have 
been  completely  satisfied  by  novels  so  composed, 
and  her  success  is  a  proof  of  the  intrinsic  and  un- 
deniable excellence  of  the  method.  Her  novels 
have  been  sold  and  are  still  sold  by  the  hundred 
thousand  wherever  women's  hearts  beat  for  the 
misfortunes  of  innocence  and  the  Italian  tongue 
is  read  and  understood.  Before  the  war  her  pub- 
lisher, Salani,  sent  whole  shiploads  of  her  novels 
to  South  America.  And  they  were  sold  and  were 
read  far  more  than  the  works  of  her  superior 
colleagues,  far  more  than  the  volumes  of  De 
Amicis  or  d'Annunzio.  The  editions  of  her  most 
famous  books  are  as  numerous  as  those  of  the 


236   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Reali  di  Francia  (the  one  truly  Italian  romantic 
epic)  or  those  of  Bertoldo  (the  one  truly  Italian 
comic  hero).  So  long  and  so  vast  a  success  can- 
not be  without  its  reasons,  nor  can  all  its  reasons 
be  to  the  discredit  of  the  writer  or  her  devotees. 

Her  success  was  obtained  honestly,  without  the 
trumpeting  of  newspapers  or  the  fanning  of 
critics,  without  even  the  aid  of  mystery  or  a  poetic 
pseudonym.  She  did  not  call  herself  the  Count- 
ess of  Lara,  nor  Phoebe,  nor  the  Sphinx,  nor 
the  Queen  of  Luanto,  nor  lolanda,  nor  Cordelia, 
nor  Fate.  She  was  content — being  a  woman  of 
simple  ways,  as  our  friend  the  paragrapher  has 
it — with  the  modern  and  homely  name  of  Caro- 
lina Invernizio.  And  though  she  married  a  cer- 
tain Colonel  Quinterno,  she  died  as  Carolina 
Invernizio — at  Cuneo,  in  that  sturdy  Piedmont 
where  she  was  born,  I  believe,  in  the  fateful  year 
of  1860.  Her  ashes  are  to  be  brought  to  Flor- 
ence, where  first  the  ways  and  the  hopes  of  art 
opened  before  her.  In  the  half  century  that 
witnessed  the  final  resurrection  of  her  father- 
land, it  was  she  who  rendered  Italy  independent 
of  foreign  importations  in  the  one  branch  of 
literature  that  is  so  necessary  to  the  mass  of  the 
nation — the  novel  of  intrigue  and  villainy. 

Lest  it  be  said  that  I  am  too  partial  to  this 
woman,  who  has  been  too  much  blamed  and  too 
much  praised  (as  they  said  of  Voltaire),  let  me 
close  with  the  testimony  of  a  keen  and  disillu- 


CAROLINA  INVERNIZIO         237 

sioned  writer  who,  though  a  friend  of  mine,  has 
exceptionally  good  taste.  Ardengo  Soffici  re- 
lates in  his  Logbook  that  on  a  certain  occasion 
he  and  a  companion  were  both  reading  novels 
by  Carolina  Invernizio.  His  was  The  Villains 
Joy;  his  companion's  was  Mortal  Passion: 

Every  now  and  then  we  stopped  reading  to  compare  notes. 
"How  many  killed  off  so  far?" 
"Two." 

"Three  in  mine." 
"What's  the  heroine  like?" 

"Periwinkle  eyes,  golden  hair,  pale  face,  sad  mouth." 
"Same  here." 

And  the  rest  was  what  you  might  expect  to  find  in  Zuccoli 
or  Ojetti  or  Angeli.    Nor  was  it  notably  inferior. 

And  that  is  exactly  my  opinion,  except  that  I 
would  omit  the  "notably,"  and  would  not  hesitate 
to  say  the  work  of  Carolina  Invernizio  is  superior 
at  least  in  that  it  does  not  bore  one.  But  a  mod- 
ern Italian  novelist  who  realized  that  he  was 
interesting  would  think  himself  dishonored. 
I,  free  from  prejudice  and  from  Arcadian 
austerity,  admire  and  salute  in  the  deceased  Caro- 
lina the  first  and  only  Italian  rival  of  the  immor- 
tal Ponson  du  Terrail.^ 

^The  perception  of  real  values  is  so  rare  among  us  that  soon 
after  this  essay  was  first  published  I  received  a  letter  of  thanks 
from  the  husband  of  the  deceased — and  her  publisher,  Salani, 
asked  my  permission  to  reprint  it  as  a  preface  to  a  posthumous 
novel. 


XVIII 
ALFREDO  ORIANI ^ 


Seven  years  ago  there  died,  after  fifty-seven 
years  of  restless  and  imprisoned  life,  a  man  whom 
his  fellow  men  had  neither  loved  nor  understood. 
He  died  alone  as  he  had  lived;  he  died  in  this 
season  of  death  which  had  inspired  his  most  poetic 
pages. 

One  cannot  say  that  he  died  forgotten,  be- 
cause he  had  never  won  fame.  The  novels  writ- 
ten in  his  youth  had  aroused  a  curiosity  which 
failed  to  develop  into  glory.  His  other,  stronger 
books,  his  books  of  synthesis,  had  been  received 
in  silence  by  a  generation  incapable  of  under- 
standing them.  In  recent  years  a  little  youthful 
appreciation  had  brought  the  rare  smile  to  that 
face  of  his,  graven  by  the  acids  of  melancholy, 
but  had  not  canceled  the  look  of  proud  sadness 
impressed  upon  it  by  the  neglect  of  his  contem- 

*  Written  in  October,  1916,  for  the  seventh  anniversary  of  the 
death  of  Oriani. 

238 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  239 

poraries.  He  had  just  begun  to  emerge  from 
the  silence  into  which  a  deaf  and  brutal  indiffer- 
ence had  banished  him,  when  Fate  thrust  him 
into  that  other  silence  from  which  there  is  no 
emerging  save  at  the  summons  of  glory. 

Some  three  years  before  Oriani's  death, 
Giosue  Carducci  had  passed  to  the  heaven  of 
recognized  glories,  amid  a  national  adoration 
which  took  well  nigh  the  form  of  apotheosis. 
Carducci  was  a  greater  man  than  Oriani,  to  be 
sure,  but  they  differed  far  more  widely  in  fame 
than  in  desert.  They  were  not  friends,  but  Oriani 
would  have  been  the  one  man  worthy  to  be  the 
companion  of  Carducci,  through  the  loftiness  of 
his  genius  and  the  virility  of  his  eloquence;  far 
more  worthy  than  the  so-called  disciples  of 
Carducci,  who  were  scarcely  capable  of  follow- 
ing feebly  the  letter  of  his  work,  and  were  utterly 
remote  from  its  spirit,  from  its  temper,  from  its 
dignity — parlor  kittens  playing  about  the  bed  of 
a  sick  lion  whose  roaring  days  were  over. 

As  poet  and  as  philologist,  Oriani  would  have 
suffered  by  the  comparison;  but  as  thinker  and 
as  historian  he  unquestionably  surpassed  Car- 
ducci, and  would  have  surpassed  him  still  more 
notably  had  he  felt  around  him  that  affectionate 
and  intelligent  approval  which  may  be  scorned 
by  those  who  fail  to  win  it,  but  serves  none  the 
less  to  encourage  even  the  most  vigorous.    Both 


240   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

men  loved  Italy  with  a  jealous  and  passionate 
love,  and  both  lashed  Italy  for  the  faults  of  her 
decadence — even  as  all  those  who  have  loved  her 
deeply  have  reproached  her  bitterly.  And  here 
there  is  food  for  the  thought  of  those  who  regard 
all  that  surrounds  them  as  perfect  and  heroic, 
who  cannot  unite  the  dart  of  Archilochus  to  the 
song  of  Pindar,  who  fancy  that  patriotism  is 
composed  of  caresses  and  flatteries. 

In  Carducci  this  passion  for  Italy  came  chiefly 
from  the  practice  of  art:  in  Oriani  it  came  from 
meditation  on  the  past.  The  former  was  a  lyrist 
who  in  the  depths  of  history  saw  only  an  indefi- 
nite Nemesis;  the  latter,  a  "prophet  of  the  past" 
who  brought  the  dead  to  hfe  that  they  might  tell 
their  secret  to  the  living,  a  man  who  could  dis- 
cern in  the  nation's  experience  the  manifold  ele- 
ments of  an  age-long  plot,  and  fateful  prepara- 
tions for  the  future.  Equally  intense  in  their 
adoration,  they  drew  their  nourishment  from 
different  sources — those  of  Carducci  more  tradi- 
tional and  literary,  those  of  Oriani  more  con- 
scious and  political.  Oriani's  eloquence  was 
more  excited  and  more  modern,  and  his  view, 
trained  to  the  telescopic  perspectives  of  phi- 
losophy, was  of  longer  reach. 

To  those  who  have  been  slow  to  perceive  or 
quick  to  forget,  this  comparison  will  seem  strange 
and  irreverent.     Interest  in  Oriani  was  revived 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  241 

by  a  man  whom  many  esteem  even  though  they 
differ  with  him — Benedetto  Croce — but  the  com- 
mon throng  of  readers  will  not  permit  compari- 
sons between  those  who  have  and  those  who  have 
not  received  all  the  licenses,  passports,  and  vises 
of  academic,  governmental,  and  journalistic 
glorification.  Without  diplomas  and  brevets,  the 
greatest  man  is  but  an  outcast — and  intermar- 
riages are  prohibited  as  severely  as  in  royal 
Rome.  Alfredo  Oriani  was  not  the  laureate  of 
any  creed,  of  any  party,  of  any  school.  Even 
since  his  death — though  death  at  times  wins  par- 
don for  unconventionality  in  greatness — he  has 
not  succeeded  in  breaking  down  the  invisible  wall 
that  shut  from  him  the  air  and  the  light  of  recog- 
nition. "Life  is  a  prison  without  a  window,"  says 
an  English  writer.  Such  it  was  indeed  for 
Oriani. 

But  I,  being  free  from  legitimist  considera- 
tions, can  and  will  compare  him  to  the  great — 
not  that  I  may  play  the  Plutarch,  nor  that  I  may 
exalt  one  who  needs  no  exaltation,  but  as  a 
matter  of  didactic  necessity.  Despite  all  efforts, 
Oriani  is  still  unknown ;  and  the  only  way  of  giv- 
ing an  impression  of  him  to  those  who  do  not 
know  him  is  to  bring  him  into  relation  with  those 
who  are  well  known — even  though  these  latter 
appear  far  greater  than  Oriani,  even  though 
Oriani  be  made  to  seem  a  casual  intruder. 


242  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 


II 


The  dominant  quality  of  Oriani's  style  was 
eloquence.  His  mental  attitude  was  primarily 
historic.  A  writer  by  instinct,  abundant  without 
recourse  to  the  recherche,  solid  but  never  dull, 
laconic  and  epigrammatic  in  spite  of  an  appar- 
ent prolixity,  colorful  without  display,  lofty 
without  over-emphasis,  he  was  better  qualified  to 
command  than  to  narrate,  to  persuade  than  to 
describe.  He  was  a  born  orator,  though  he  sel- 
dom spoke  in  public.  His  prose  reflected  the 
constant  activity  of  a  mind  stirred  by  high 
thoughts  and  qualified  to  summarize  them  in 
rapid  and  illuminating  surveys.  His  method  of 
proceeding  by  contrasts  and  antitheses  recalls 
Victor  Hugo  and  Ferrari,  with  whom  he  must 
certainly  have  been  familiar. 

But  the  orator  cannot  be  a  true  artist  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  now  use  that  word:  that  is, 
he  cannot  be  disinterested.  In  the  orator,  to- 
gether with  the  real  and  powerful  art  of  expres- 
sion, there  exists  a  desire  to  convince  himself  and 
others  which  is  foreign  to  the  pure  artist,  since 
it  is  of  practical  origin.  When  Oriani  gave  him- 
self up  to  his  own  imagination,  or  when  in  his 
novels  he  succeeded  in  living  in  his  characters,  he 
approached  art  as  we  understand  it.  He  was 
not  always  as  original  or  as  perfect  as  others  be- 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  243 

fore  or  since  his  time,  but  he  was  a  true  writer 
of  the  best  Itahan  quahty. 

Even  in  his  novels  his  eloquence  now  and  then 
got  the  better  of  him.  Some  problem  suggested 
a  page  of  reflection,  some  name  led  to  an  essay 
in  criticism,  some  story  turned  into  a  literary 
or  philosophic  discussion — just  as  some  of  his 
biographical  portraits  began  like  stories.  But 
throughout  his  work  the  life  pulsed  strongly. 

For  the  eloquence  of  Oriani  was  not  the  empty 
eloquence  of  the  professional  man  of  letters,  nor 
the  sophistical  eloquence  of  the  lawyer.  It  was 
an  eloquence  warm  with  passion,  nourished  with 
facts,  sustained  by  ideas,  rich  in  intuitions  and 
in  discoveries,  an  eloquence  that  sought  to  per- 
suade both  intellect  and  heart.  It  transported 
you,  with  the  freshness  of  its  allusions  and  the 
rapidity  of  its  evocations,  to  the  summit  of  one 
of  those  mountains  from  which — if  you  have  the 
breath  to  reach  the  top — you  may  perceive  all 
the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  all  the  activities  of 
mankind.  It  was  the  eloquence  of  a  historian 
deeply  interested  in  the  past,  of  a  thinker  pas- 
sionately concerned  with  his  problems,  of  an 
Itahan  enamored  of  Italy.  It  had  nothing  in 
common  with  that  eloquence  which  is  too  often 
the  tiny  voice  of  mediocrity  transmitted  through 
the  megaphone  of  literature. 

When  it  comes  to  poetry,  I  agree  with  Ver- 
laine's  dictum:    "Prend  I'eloquence  et  tord-lui  le 


244   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

cou!"  But  history,  even  when  viewed  by  a  poet, 
is  history  and  not  poetry:  that  is  to  say,  it  is  an 
artistic  representation  of  events,  but  it  is  at  the 
same  time  a  meditation  on  events.  That  lyric 
Hberty  which  is  independent  of  subjects  and  of 
anecdotes,  as  we  of  today  maintain,  cannot  be 
expected  from  one  who,  hke  Oriani,  writes  and 
rewrites  a  historical  discourse  on  Italy  and  the 
Itahans. 

To  my  mind,  the  greatness  of  Oriani  lies  in 
his  syntheses,  long  or  short,  of  the  remote  or  the 
recent  past,  and  in  the  marvelous  portraits  which 
enliven  those  syntheses.  The  only  men  to  whom 
you  can  compare  him  are  Carlyle  in  England, 
Michelet  in  France,  and  Giuseppe  Ferrari  in 
Italy.  And  in  some  respects  he  was  their 
superior.  He  lacked  the  Englishman's  humor 
and  originality;  his  scholarly  preparation  was 
less  than  that  of  the  Frenchman;  the  Italian  sur- 
passed him  in  philosophic  genius.  But  no  one 
of  the  three  wrote  pages  as  clean-cut  and  impres- 
sive as  those  of  Oriani — pages  in  which  the  poet's 
sense  of  life,  the  philosopher's  sense  of  space,  the 
keenness  of  the  historian,  and  the  filial  love  of  the 
citizen  are  fused  in  a  sj  nthesis  which  wins  us  com- 
pletely. Fortunately,  too,  he  did  not  have  the 
apocalyptic  moralizing  of  Carlyle,  the  democratic 
emphasis  of  Michelet,  or  the  mechanistic  and 
mathematical  mania  of  Ferrari.  He  equals  them  in 
their  best  qualities,  and  surpasses  them  in  others. 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  245 

To  Ferrari  in  particular  he  owes  much,  even  in 
point  of  style — though  his  style  is  not  without 
reflections  of  Foscolo,  Guerrazzi,  and  Carducci 
as  well.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  certain 
passages  in  the  Political  Struggle  in  Italy  are 
derived  from  Ferrari's  History  of  the  Revolu- 
tions  of  Italy;  but  the  influence  is  limited  to  a 
single  part  of  Oriani's  book,  and  in  any  case 
proves  nothing  against  him,  since  he,  assimilating 
the  skill  and  the  method  of  Ferrari,  was  merely 
going  on  to  discuss  epochs  not  treated  by  Ferrari, 
and  proving  thus  that  he  had  the  right  to  take 
over  the  results  of  his  predecessor,  summarizing 
and  illuminating  them. 

His  Political  Struggle  in  Italy — though  it  is 
ill  proportioned,  since  the  first  third  goes  to  the 
fall  of  the  Napoleonic  empire,  while  the  remain- 
ing two-thirds  treat  of  the  nineteenth  century — 
is  the  only  modern  general  history  of  Italy  that 
is  more  than  a  storehouse  of  facts  or  a  manual 
of  dates.  It  is  Oriani's  masterpiece,  though  finer 
single  pages  may  be  found  in  other  volumes, 
for  instance  in  the  collections  of  miscellaneous 
essays  entitled  To  Dogali,  Sunset  Shadows,  and 
Bivouac  Fires. 


Ill 


Like  all  those  men  of  genius  whose  curiosity 
is  equal  to  their  energy,  Oriani  was  polygonal: 


246  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

a  fortress  with  spurs  and  loopholes  in  every  direc- 
tion. Unlike  those  narrow  spirits  who  are  proud 
of  their  fixed  itinerary,  he  did  not  confine  himself 
to  a  single  path.  He  was  poet  and  critic,  nar- 
rator and  philosopher,  historian  and  essayist. 
His  activity  was  as  diversified  as  his  mind  was 
concentrated.  His  fecundity  in  thought  was  as 
great  as  his  facility  with  the  pen.  He  was  as 
prodigal  with  the  riches  of  his  spirit  as  only  the 
rich,  and  the  generous  rich,  can  be.  In  works 
of  widely  different  purpose  and  content  he  main- 
tained himself  always  upon  the  same  level. 
Always  and  everywhere  he  was  true  to  himself. 

There  are  few  men,  I  think,  who  can  compare 
with  him  as  essayists.  (Does  any  one  still  re- 
member that  flaccid  little  Milanese  Renan  called 
Gaetano  Negri?)  His  hundred  pages  on 
Machiavelli — in  To  Dogali — are  hundreds  of 
times  truer,  deeper,  and  more  instructive  than  all 
the  volumes  of  Villari  and  Tommaseo.  Here 
again,  to  be  sure,  the  inspiration  comes  from  Fer- 
rari ;  but  it  is  Oriani  whom  we  have  to  thank  for 
pointing  out  the  convergence  of  Machiavelli's 
glory  and  greatness  in  art,  in  the  creation  of 
prose — a  truth  not  even  ghmpsed  by  the  very 
man  who  ought  ew  officio  to  have  discovered  it: 
De  Sanctis. 

His  newspaper  articles — in  the  last  years  of 
his  life  he  had  to  devote  much  of  his  time  to  news- 
paper work — were  very  notable  indeed.     They 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  247 

were  not  pleasant  improvisations  nor  witty  di- 
gressions: they  were  serious,  weighty,  ill  suited 
for  the  public.  His  ability  to  mount  from  the 
little  fact  to  the  great  idea,  from  the  fleeting 
moment  to  the  most  remote  past  or  the  most  fan- 
tastic future,  from  the  individual  to  the  universal, 
from  the  materialism  of  appearances  to  the 
purity  of  a  transcending  idea,  shines  brilliantly 
throughout  this  work.  It  would  seem  that  in 
these  last  years  of  weariness  he  sought  to  ac- 
complish his  most  heroic  feats.  In  comparison 
with  him  Rastignac  is  but  flat  champagne,  Scar- 
foglio  a  parlor  volcano,  Bergeret  a  gossip  of  the 
tea-table. 

But  his  style  could  not  win  popularity.  A 
roughness  of  manner,  a  solemn  austerity,  a  pas- 
sionate eloquence  gave  sacredness  and  majesty 
to  every  theme  he  handled.  Like  the  mythical 
king  who  turned  whatever  he  touched  to  gold, 
so  Oriani  gave  the  air  of  greatness  to  all  subjects, 
even  the  most  trivial.  He  was  not  a  man  of 
laughter.  Everything  was  serious  to  him — love 
and  history,  woman  and  frailty.  When  his  in- 
dignation was  aroused  he  could  attack  a  man  or 
an  idea  with  a  persistent  fusillade  of  scornful 
invectives,  but  he  never  attained  the  ridicule  that 
can  slay  as  surely  as  an  insult.  His  spirit  was 
inherently  tragic.  He  lacked  the  ability  to  laugh 
and  to  make  others  laugh;  his  irony  was  too 


248  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

bitter,  his  mocking  turned  always  into  apostrophe 
or  reproach. 

In  his  novels  an  underlying  conviction  of  the 
inevitability  of  sorrow  prevents  the  development 
of  any  sense  of  pleasure.  His  satire  of  pro- 
vincial and  bourgeois  manners  is  pitiless.  Nearly 
all  of  his  heroes  are  blameless  unfortunates,  souls 
exceptional  or  commonplace,  destined  alike  to 
suffering.  With  the  artist's  intuition,  Oriani  has 
discovered  the  terrible  law  that  governs  great  and 
small — the  tendency  of  life  toward  a  centrifugal 
futility.  The  tragedy  which  fills  Defeat  is  more 
impressive  than  the  detail  of  any  conjugal 
drama:  perfection  itself  leads  to  unhappiness. 
Even  under  the  best  conditions  human  experience 
tends  toward  the  impossible. 

The  novels  of  Oriani  are  by  no  means  perfect 
works.  Some  of  them  are  old-fashioned,  others 
are  monotonous.  They  all  lack  that  exquisite- 
ness  and  novelty  which  readers  have  sought  in 
this  popular  and  ephemeral  genre  since  the  time 
of  Flaubert.  But  if  we  think  of  the  novelists  who 
were  contemporary  with  him,  we  can  do  no  less 
than  put  him  on  a  par,  here  too,  with  men  who  in 
point  of  fame  surpassed  him  so  much  as  not  to 
be  aware  of  his  existence. 

The  most  popular  of  these  novelists,  Fogaz- 
zaro  and  d'Annunzio,  are  but  women  in  compari- 
son: Fogazzaro  a  mystic  devotee  with  leanings 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  249 

toward  gallantry;  d'Annunzio  an  adventuress 
with  leanings  toward  mysticism. 

Oriani  and  Verga,  far  superior  to  the  other 
two  in  sobriety,  solidity,  honesty,  and  energy,  are 
the  real  men  of  the  group.  But  they  are  too  hard 
for  teeth  that  prefer  sweetmeats  (women  readers 
determine  popularity!)  and  by  the  side  of  the 
other  two  they  appear  inferior  and  uncouth. 
They  were  both  deeply  attached  to  their  own 
regions — Romagna  and  Sicily — they  were  both 
upright  artists,  sad  with  a  manly  sadness,  re- 
corders of  misfortune  and  decadence,  scorners 
of  ornament  and  trickery.  And  they  both  await 
a  fairer  judgment.  One  of  them  died  all  but 
unknown ;  the  other,  all  but  forgotten,  waits  still 
for  death. 

•Oriani  did  not  write  any  one  novel  that  can  be 
called  a  masterpiece,  but  in  every  one  of  his 
novels  there  are  pages  in  which  nature  lives  in 
its  full  freshness  of  sound  and  color,  pages  of 
relentless  and  cruel  psychology  in  which  the 
wretched  souls  of  wretched  men  are  revealed  with 
a  homicidal  lucidity.  When  the  definitive  history 
of  the  Italian  novel  of  the  nineteenth  century 
shall  be  written,  the  importance  of  Oriani  will 
inevitably  be  recognized,  and  he  will  receive  the 
place  to  which  the  profundity  of  his  genius  and 
the  vigor  of  his  art  entitle  him.  To  find  his  com- 
peers one  must  go  to  the  great  French  novelists 
of  the  nineteenth  century. 


250  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 


IV 


This  is  not  intended  as  a  commemorative 
essay:  Oriani  does  not  lend  himself  to  the  usual 
solemnities.  Nor  is  it  an  introductory  essay:  it 
would  take  a  book,  not  an  article,  to  present 
Oriani.  Nor  is  it  an  apology  or  a  vindication: 
time  is  working  quietly  to  prepare  readers  for 
those  who  deserve  them. 

Oriani  might  have  chosen  as  motto  for  his 
Political  Struggle  the  proud  phrase  of  Kepler: 
"My  book  can  wait  for  its  reader."  His  spiritual 
life  was  as  sad  as  his  own  novels.  His  love  was 
not  requited,  his  intelligence  was  not  recognized, 
his  greatness  remained  as  lonely  as  a  fire  dying 
uselessly  in  a  desert. 

Only  in  recent  years  has  this  hungry  wanderer 
begun  to  win  justice.  I  am  offering  my  testi- 
mony for  what  it  may  be  worth.  My  te'stimony  is 
that  of  a  man  called  destructive,  and  yet  it  is 
more  capable  of  tenderness  and  admiration  than 
are  many  of  those  who  so  judge  it.  My  testi- 
mony maintains  that  Oriani  is  not  forgotten  and 
must  not  be  forgotten. 

I  never  knew  him  personally.  In  1905  I  had 
the  honor  of  jjublishing  in  the  Leonardo  an  un- 
published chapter  of  his  Ideal  Revolt;  but  I 
never  saw  him.  Perhaps  it  is  just  as  well:  we 
should  hardly  have  had  time  to  smooth  our  angu- 


ALFREDO  ORIANI  251 

larities  through  intimacy.  But  now  that  he  is 
dead,  I  feel  as  though  I  had  known  him,  I  feel 
him  nearer,  I  might  almost  say  that  he  has  be- 
come my  friend.  I  seem  to  have  seen  that  sad 
and  deeply-lined  face  of  his,  those  wide-open  eyes 
that  saw  only  high  and  distant  things.  I  seem  to 
have  heard  his  voice  thundering  the  pleas  of 
idealism  amid  friends  in  the  cafe  or  on  the  street. 
But  I  never  knew  him. 

They  say  that  one  evening,  not  many  years  be- 
fore his  death,  when  he  was  leaving  Bologna  for 
Casolavalsenio,  he  was  sitting  alone  in  the  dark 
in  a  third-class  compartment,  when  some  one 
stepped  up  to  the  open  door  and  asked:  "Who 
is  in  here?" 

And  out  of  the  darkness  came  a  great  deep 
voice  that  answered:  "The  greatest  writer  in 
Italy!" 

The  reply  was  meant  as  a  melancholy  jest  and 
a  lyric  sarcasm,  but  it  was  not  without  its  truth. 
Alfredo  Oriani  was  in  reality  one  of  the  greatest 
Italian  writers  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


XIX 

WILLIAM  TELL 


Four  apples  mark  the  four  great  epochs  of 
human  history — the  apple  of  Eve  (the  Biblical 
epoch) ;  the  apple  of  Paris  (the  Hellenic  epoch) ; 
the  apple  of  Tell  (the  mediteval  epoch) ;  the  ap- 
ple of  Newton  (the  scientific  epoch).  The  one 
of  the  four  whose  fate  I  most  regret — for  ap- 
ples, unlike  the  women  of  Nicea,  have  souls — is 
the  one  the  Swiss  bowman  with  the  cock's  feather 
transfixed  on  his  son's  head. 

The  first  of  the  four,  as  we  all  know,  was 
eaten  by  our  first  parents,  with  consequences 
that  have  made  us  what  we  are.  The  second 
went  as  award  to  the  fairest  creature  in  all  myth- 
ology, who  bit  into  it,  I  hope,  in  honor  of  the 
charming  herdsman.  The  last,  though  somewhat 
injured  in  its  fall,  gave  us  the  law  of  universal 
gravitation,  and  a  great  improvement  in  celestial 
mechanics. 

But  the  apple  of  Tell — alas! — gave  us  the 
Swiss  nation.  And  what  the  Swiss  nation  has 
given  us  I  refrain  from  saying. 

252 


WILLIAM  TELL  253 


II 


In  the  history  of  famous  fools — which  ought 
to  find  a  place  in  the  library  of  every  intelligent 
man — a  conspicuous  chapter  is  reserved  for  that 
wild  cross-bowman  who  bears  the  name  of 
William  Tell.  Much  may  be  forgiven  him  for 
the  single  but  valid  reason  that  he  is  perhaps 
nothing  more  than  a  fiction  of  the  chroniclers, 
clumsy  even  in  their  inventions.  But  myths  are 
the  unconscious  revelation  of  peoples;  and  this 
Tell — I  can  see  his  green  hat  set  on  the  bony 
cube  of  a  head  impermeable  to  thought — gives 
me  the  impression  of  a  county-fair  hero  and  a 
shooting-gallery  champion:  surely  that  bow  of 
his  never  failed  to  win  the  goose.  'Twas  but  a 
gross  and  sluggish  spirit  that  could  so  miss  the 
profound  irony  of  a  bailiff  content  to  receive 
a  bow.  When  a  monarch  has  become  but  a  hat 
on  top  of  a  pole,  what  more  can  a  free  people 
ask  or  expect?  Was  it  not  indeed  an  honor  that 
the  imperial  heir  of  the  Csesars  should  deign  to 
govern  those  tribes  of  mountainous  boors  who, 
now  that  they  are  left  to  themselves,  have  come  to 
the  point  of  submitting,  through  the  referendum, 
to  the  plebiscite  of  incompetence? 

Even  in  the  drama  of  his  greatest  champion. 
Tell  cuts  but  a  poor  figure.  When  his  more  dar- 
ing friends  urge  him  to  conspire  for  the  liberation 


254,  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

of  his  country,  he  will  have  none  of  it,  and  puts 
them  off  with  vague  promises.  In  the  famous 
scene  of  the  shooting,  when  he  might  have  trans- 
fixed the  bailiff's  heart  and  escaped  (for  those 
around  him  were  his  friends),  he  is  content  to 
put  the  life  of  his  son  in  jeopardy.  He  does 
not  attend  the  night  assembly  on  the  Riitli,  the 
true  beginning  and  foundation  of  Helvetian  lib- 
erty. His  only  achievements  are  the  treacher- 
ous murder  of  the  baihff  and  the  expulsion  of 
the  assassin  of  the  emperor  who  was  the  enemy 
of  his  land.  It  took  nothing  less  than  the  in- 
flated democracy  of  the  retired  military  surgeon, 
inventor  of  the  moralizing  brigand,  of  the 
Marquis  of  Posa,  and  of  other  poseurs,  to  make 
that  rustic  booby  of  a  Tell  the  hero  of  a  tragedy. 


Ill 


Neither  the  feeble  poetry  of  Schiller  nor  the 
vigorous  music  of  Rossini  has  ever  succeeded 
in  making  me  admire  the  ill-starred  churl. 
Whenever  I  see  his  face,  in  awkward  lithographs 
scarce  worthy  of  his  own  awkwardness,  I  wish 
intensely  that  another  archer,  more  ancient  and 
infinitely  more  modern — the  divine  Odysseus — 
might  rise  before  him,  draw  bow,  and  split  in  two 
the  wooden  pumpkin  that  served  him  for  a  head. 

I  intend  no  offense  to  free  Switzerland,  who 


WILLIAM  TELL  255 

calls  herself  free  precisely  because  she  has  al- 
ways sent  her  children  to  be  the  armed  servants 
of  the  most  reactionary  kings  of  Europe,  from 
the  Bourbons  of  Paris  to  the  Bourbons  of  Naples. 
And  there  can  be  no  offense  to  any  one  in  the 
statement  of  this  historic  truth:  that  since 
Switzerland  (thanks  to  the  apple  of  Tell)  with- 
drew from  European  civilization,  she  has  con- 
tributed little  or  nothing  to  that  civilization. 
Not  one  great  writer,  not  one  great  artist,  not 
one  great  philosopher.  The  most  glorious  Re- 
formed church  of  Switzerland  was  founded  by  a 
Frenchman.  Her  writers  are  a  Toepffer  or  a 
Keller,  her  scientists  a  Lavater  or  a  Haller,  her 
artists  a  Boecklin  or  a  Hodler — none  of  them 
men  who  have  risen  above  the  mediocrity  of  the 
valleys. 

The  one  universal  man  sprung  from  this  land 
is  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau — who  was  ashamed 
of  his  country,  which  in  turn  was  ashamed  of 
him,  and  condemned  his  books.  Rousseau,  in- 
deed, was  himself  a  sort  of  William  Tell:  but 
he  shot  the  arrows  of  paradox  not  at  apples,  but 
at  tyranny.  And  after  his  death  the  bloody 
mushroom  growth  of  the  Jacobin  tyrants  and  the 
Terror  grew  from  the  mire  of  his  excesses. 


XX 

DON  QUIXOTE 

No  soy  tan  loco  ni  tan  menguado  como  debo  de  haberle 
parecido. — Don  Quixote,  Part  I,  Chapter  XVII. 


Great  is  the  power  of  genius,  even  though  it 
be  constrained  to  inhabit  the  flesh  of  a  swords- 
man, soldier,  slave,  accountant,  adventurer, 
prisoner,  wandering  poet,  and  needy  courtier  by 
the  name  of  Miguel  Cervantes. 

By  virtue  of  this  power  the  shade  of  Don 
Quixote  has  succeeded  in  deceiving  us.  We 
have  been  led  to  think  that  his  life  was  full  of  de- 
ception in  the  sense  that  he  was  himself  deceived 
by  carnivorous  men,  decadent  times,  and  im- 
possible books.  His  life  was  indeed  full  of  de- 
ception, but  he  was  himself  the  deceiver,  and 
we  of  the  succeeding  generations  have  been  the 
ones  deceived. 

Cervantes  does  all  he  can  to  set  before  us — 
like  a  lank  marionette  decked  out  in  obsessions 
and    scraps    of    iron — a    Don    Quixote  crazed 

256 


DON  QUIXOTE  257 

through  excessive  reading,  a  Don  Quixote  mag- 
nified by  his  sapient  eloquence  and  still  more  by 
his  imitative  madness.  And  we  of  the  later 
generations  have  adored  this  Don  Quixote  as 
the  martj^r  of  a  pure,  militant,  and  derided  Chris- 
tianity at  odds  with  the  persistent  and  world- 
wide life  of  those  baptized  pagans  for  whom  con- 
vention is  truth,  idleness  is  wisdom,  comfort  is 
goodness,  and  bread  and  meat  are  the  only 
tangible  essence  of  life.  Every  man  who  has 
challenged  this  common  paganism  has  thought 
himself  a  knight,  and  has  felt  on  his  own  shoulders 
the  staves  that  beat  him  to  the  ground.  In  Don 
Quixote's  wise  antique  serenity,  in  his  futile  love 
of  the  good,  we  moderns  have  seen  a  reflection  of 
Socrates  and  of  Christ,  both  of  whom  went  to 
death  at  man's  behest  because  they  were  better 
than  other  men. 

Don  Quixote  has  seemed  to  us  but  half  a  mar- 
tyr: men  left  him  his  life — we  said — but  blows, 
torments,  tortures,  and  mockeries  fell  to  him  as 
to  his  models,  and  at  the  end,  his  soul  quenched 
by  trickery,  he  survived  only  to  regain  the  com- 
mon imbecility  of  the  world,  and  to  die  in  his 
bed  more  lean  than  he  was  before. 

This  creed  has  been  one  of  the  many  "dear 
illusions"  which  art,  the  rival  of  nature,  has  pre- 
pared for  us  in  these  three  hundred  years.  Even 
Don  Quixote  has  deceived  us,  and  it  is  our  own 
fault  that  we  have  not  realized  it  before.    Don 


258  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Quixote  too,  like  all  those  beings,  created  by  God 
or  by  genius,  who  in  one  point  at  least  attain  the 
absolute,  has  a  secret;  and  this  secret  he  has  at 
last  revealed  to  me,  whose  fidelity  had  been 
proven  in  the  many  quixotic  vigils  of  my  youth. ^ 

Don  Quixote  is  not  mad.  He  does  not  go  mad 
in  spite  of  himself.  He  belongs  to  the  common 
type  of  the  Brutuses  and  the  Hamlets:  he  pre- 
tends that  he  is  mad.  He  fashions  an  extrava- 
gant career  for  himself  in  order  that  he  may  es- 
cape the  deadly  monotony  of  Argamasilla.  In 
the  invention  of  his  difficulties  and  misfortunes 
he  is  quite  without  fear,  because  he  knows  that 
he  is  the  moving  agent,  conscious  of  what  he  is 
doing,  and  ready  at  any  time  to  put  on  the  brake 
or  turn  aside.  That  is  why  he  is  neither  tragic 
nor  desperate.  His  whole  adventure  is  a  delib- 
erate amusement.  He  may  well  be  serene,  for 
he  alone  knows  the  truth  of  the  game,  and  his 
soul  has  no  room  for  veritable  anguish. 

Don  Quixote  is  not  in  earnest. 


II 


In  order  to  see  clearly  into  so  grievous  a  mys- 
tery, we  must  dismiss  the  ostensible  evidence  of 
the  book  itself. 

*As  long  ago  as  1911  I  had  corae  to  realize  that  Don  Quixote 
was  not  mad,  and  had  said  that  "the  structure  of  his  mind  and 
life  was  perfectly  normal"  {L'altra  meta,  p.  134),  but  I  did  not 
then  insist  on  the  true  nature  of  his  apparent  madness. 


DOlSr  QUIXOTE  259 

Cervantes  himself  said,  and  scores  of  critics 
have  said  after  him,  that  he  really  meant  to  de- 
stroy the  genre  of  the  romance  of  chivalry;  but 
this  is  not  to  be  believed  for  a  moment.  It  is 
just  another  literary  trick,  akin  to  the  device  of 
"the  manuscripts  of  Cid  Hamet  Benengeli" — 
just  one  of  the  many  tricks  to  which  Cervantes 
had  recourse.  The  balanced  and  truly  cultured 
brain  of  Cervantes  could  not  possibly  have  har- 
bored such  a  purpose.  The  book  itself  belies  it. 
In  the  first  place,  Cervantes  satirizes  not  the  ro- 
mances of  chivalry  alone,  but  all  literary  genres 
without  exception.  By  parody  or  irony  or  direct 
criticism  all  contemporary  literature  is  con- 
demned, and  in  particular  its  most  popular 
forms,  the  pastoral  and  the  drama. 

The  chief  accusation  which  Cervantes  pretends 
to  bring  against  the  books  of  chivalry  is  their 
improbability.  An  extraordinary  accusation  to 
come  from  the  mouth  of  him  who  began  with  the 
pastoral  improbabilities  of  the  Galatea,  filled  the 
Don  Qiiivote  itself  with  improbable  tragic  and 
pastoral  adventures,  composed  a  chivalric  drama 
after  finishing  the  first  part  and  before  beginning 
the  second  part  of  Don  Quixote,  and  at  the  end 
of  his  life  reworked,  in  the  Trahajos  de  Persiles 
y  Sigismunda,  the  intricate  and  improbable  voy- 
ages of  the  fantastic  Byzantine  romance. 

Cervantes,  a  man  of  taste  and  imagination, 
knew,  as  all  of  us  know,  that  every  work  of  art 


260  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

is  by  its  very  nature  improbable,  even  as  all  those 
lives  and  actions  and  works  are  improbable  which 
rise  above  the  surface  of  that  round  stagnant 
swamj)  in  which  we  live.  Even  in  the  Don 
Quixote  Cervantes,  with  the  justice  of  a  compe- 
tent artist,  saves  and  defends  more  than  one  ro- 
mance of  chivalry.  The  only  ones  he  throws 
into  the  fire  are  those  whose  existence  is  not  jus- 
tified by  beauty  of  expression  and  imagination.^ 

Nor  could  he,  accepting  as  reality  the  Spain 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  claim  to  regard  as 
utterly  improbable  the  mediaeval  knightly  sagas 
of  Brittany  and  the  Ardennes.  To  us  the  con- 
trast between  daily  life  and  the  marvels  of  chiv- 
alry seems  far  greater  than  it  really  was  in  the 
Spain  of  Cervantes.  The  grotesque  exploits  of 
Don  Quixote  would  be  impossible  in  our  well 
regulated  lands.  At  his  first  sally  gendannes 
and  doctors  would  have  seized  Rocinante  and  his 
rider.  Even  the  attack  on  the  windmills  and 
the  meeting  with  the  Biscayan  would  have  been 
impossible. 

Furthermore,  no  absolute  contrast  between 
the  dreams  of  Don  Quixote  and  ordinary  hfe  is 
to  be  found  in  the  novel  itself.  The  inn-keeper 
and  the  curate  second  Don  Quixote's  whims  for 
reasons  of  their  own;  the  ducal  party  and  the 
bachelor  and  the  banditti  of  Barcelona  merely 
order  affairs  in  such  a  way  that  Don  Quixote 

^  Part  I,  Chapter  VII. 


DON  QUIXOTE  261 

may  have  reason  to  believe  himself  to  be  what 
he  claims  to  be.  They  think  him  their  fool,  but 
they  are  the  slaves  of  his  fooleries. 

But  this  makes  little  difference.  Even  from 
the  point  of  view  of  that  moment  and  that  milieu^ 
there  is  so  much  that  is  improbable  in  the  story 
of  the  Manchegan  that  we  cannot  reasonably  be- 
lieve that  Cervantes  really  meant  to  exterminate 
the  absurdities  of  chivalry  in  the  name  of  a  new 
realism  which,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  but  partial 
and  sporadic.  Those  who  hold  such  an  opinion 
have  not  reached  even  the  understanding  of  the 
letter,  and  there  is  little  hope  of  bringing  them 
to  admit  the  probability  of  other  meanings. 

Equally  wide  of  the  mark  are  those  who  see 
or  seek  some  symbolism  in  Cervantes'  novel.  The 
most  frequent  of  these  symbolistic  errors,  due  to 
the  fatuous  desire  for  profundity,  is  the  worn- 
out  legend  that  the  Don  Quixote  is  a  modernized 
version  of  the  mediaeval  theme  of  the  conflict 
betwixt  soul  and  body.  The  lank  master  is  sup- 
posed to  be  the  spirit,  the  ideal,  always  contra- 
dicted by  the  rotund  servitor  who  represents  the 
flesh  and  base  reality.  All  other  mystic  explana- 
tions of  the  Don  Quixote  are  of  this  order:  Don 
Quixote  is  the  ascetic,  holy  and  mad;  his  com- 
panions are  sensible,  Philistine  and  mundane. 

To  attribute  a  philosophy  to  the  Don  Quixote 
is  the  surest  way  to  falsify  it.  Any  one  may  take 
these  creatures  of  the  book  and  make  them  sym- 


262  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

bols  of  whatsoever  he  chooses,  even  of  the  most 
abstract  terms.  But  in  this  case  it  is  the  book 
that  is  lending  its  names  to  the  speculative 
dreamer;  the  man  is  not  interpreting  the  book. 
We  must  endeavor  to  see  Don  Quixote  as  he  is, 
and  not  regard  him  as  an  empty  lantern  in  which 
we  may  put  any  candle  that  we  choose,  to  give 
light  to  those  that  wander. 

I  cannot  even  see  the  literal  Don  Quixote  as 
the  mystics  see  him.  He  is  not  single-minded 
and  disinterested  enough  for  a  supreme  incarna- 
tion of  idealism.  He  is  by  no  means  the  Chris- 
tian altruist  that  he  is  made  out  to  be. 

If  he  seeks  to  cast  down  the  strong  and  to  de- 
fend the  weak,  it  is  simply  because  that  is  the 
tradition  handed  down  in  the  tales  of  knightly 
deeds.  He  is  an  imitator.  He  has  before  him 
a  whole  gallery  of  models.  If  Amadis  had  been 
pitiless  and  unfaithful,  he  too  would  have  been 
pitiless  and  unfaithful.  He  is  vain  and  proud, 
he  thinks  constantly  of  earthly  glory,^  he  aspires 
to  material  conquests,  he  is  capable  of  fictitious 
inventions.^ 

Nor  can  Sancho  Panza  be  fairly  regarded  as 
the  representative  of  common  sense  and  material- 
ism. Sancho  has  more  actual  behef  than  Don 
Quixote.    Don  Quixote  believes  (or  professes  to 

*  Instances  in  Part  I,  Chapters  I  and  V,  and  Part  II,  Chapters 
V  and  XXXIX. 

"  With  regard  to  the  Cave  of  Montesinos  "he  said  that  he  had 
invented  it  because  it  seemed  to  him  in  keeping  with  matters  that 
he  had  read  in  his  romances":  Part  II,  Chapter  XXIV. 


DON  QUIXOTE  263 

believe)  in  the  olden  cavaliers;  but  Sancho  be- 
lieves in  Don  Quixote,  and  that  is  a  much  more 
difficult  faith.  Sancho  finds  in  his  increasing 
veneration  for  his  master  a  terrestrial  ideal  far 
removed  from  his  sure  possessions.  He  dreams 
a  dream;  and  when — in  his  island — ^his  dream 
comes  true  he  reveals  himself  more  enamored  of 
justice  than  of  gain.  In  short,  the  only  real  mad- 
man in  the  book  is  Sancho,  and  the  usual  con- 
trasts between  him  and  his  master  are  utterly 
invalid/ 


III 


The  substance  of  the  book— if  we  may  linger 
for  a  moment  on  this  theme  before  returning 
to  our  hero  and  his  deceptions — is  by  no  means 
such  as  the  allegorists  would  lead  us  to  beheve. 
The  work  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  unity,  and  the 
part  that  still  lives  for  us  amounts  to  perhaps  one- 
third  of  the  whole.  The  Don  Quixote  is  a  mis- 
cellany which  may  be  easily  resolved  into  its  ele- 
ments.   It  contains: 

Madrigals  and  burlesque  lyrics. 

Tales :  tragic,  pathetic,  or  romantic. 

Literary  criticism  (reviews  and  opinions  on  literary  types 
and  individual  works — novels,  poems,  pastorals.  At 
times  the  expression  of  opinion  takes  the  form  of 
parody). 

*  "I  am  madder  than  he,  since  I  follow  and  serve  him":  Part 
II,  Chapter  X, 


264  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Silva  de  varias  lecciones  (oratorical  tirades  on  the  usual 
themes:  the  Golden  Age,  poverty,  ideal  government, 
marriage,  the  relative  excellence  of  arms  and  letters, 
etc.;  a  repertory  of  mediasval  and  humanistic  common- 
places). 

If  you  take  away  all  this  stuffing  there  remains 
the  story  of  the  two  travelers — a  journey,  in 
short.  This  motif  of  the  journey  brings  the  Don 
Quixote  into  line  with  the  great  books  of  hu- 
manity. The  most  profound  and  the  most  popu- 
lar of  those  books  are  narratives  of  journeys: 
the  Odyssey,  the  yEneid,  the  Divine  Comedy, 
Gulliver's  Travels,  Robinson  Crusoe,  the  Tales 
of  Sinhad,  the  Persian  Letters,  Faust,  Dead 
Soids.  For  every  great  book  is  a  timid  antici- 
pation of  the  Last  Judgment,  and  the  journey  is 
better  adapted  than  any  other  device  to  afford 
opportunity  for  the  judging  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men.  The  journey  means  variety  and 
the  transcending  of  limits.  Man  himself  has  been 
represented  a  thousand  times  as  a  pilgrim — a 
pilgrim  with  sin  for  a  wallet  and  death  for  his 
goal. 


IV 

In  the  midst  of  this  mobile  and  universal  judg- 
ment of  mankind — ^goatherds  and  friars,  mule- 
teers and  dukes,  clodhoppers  and  gentlemen,  lov- 


DON  QUIXOTE  265 

ers  and  landlords,  brigands  and  bachelors — stands 
one  old  man  with  a  secret.  He  is  a  case  for  the 
psychologists:  he  attempts  to  deceive  the  whole 
world.  But  he  is  not  so  sly  that  you  cannot  catch 
him  at  his  game.  Here  and  there  he  betrays 
himself.  The  main  lines  of  his  plot  appear  now 
and  then  in  his  words.  The  threads  of  his  veil 
of  deception  are  revealed  by  flashes  of  full  light. 

Don  Quixote  is  the  man  grown  tired  of  the  life 
of  every-day. 

His  poor,  homely,  respectable  life  with  his  cu- 
rate and  his  womenfolk  bores  him  to  death.  All 
his  restricted  provinciality,  with  its  scanty  mo- 
ments of  relief  in  hunting  or  reading,  palls  upon 
him.  He  wants  to  amuse  himself  for  a  while. 
Chivalry,  as  he  has  learned  it  in  the  great  ro- 
mances, offers  him  the  bright  path  of  a  masquer- 
ade without  peril.  As  a  man  of  letters  and  of 
experience  he  understands  that  he  cannot  sud- 
denly change  his  way  of  life  without  a  pretext. 
And  he  sees  just  one  harmless  path  of  libera- 
tion: madness. 

Partly  in  earnest  and  partly  in  fun  he  there- 
fore feigns  that  he  is  mad.  His  madness  is  as 
noble  and  as  literary  as  the  man  himself.  It 
does  not  interfere  with  his  Catholic  faith,  so 
necessary  to  one  who  seeks  to  live  without  dis- 
aster; indeed  it  takes  on  the  aspect  of  an  evan- 
gelical crusade,  so  far  as  it  may  do  so  within 
the  limits  of  the  indispensable  imitation, 


266  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

But  if  Don  Quixote  had  been  so  pure  and  sin- 
cere a  Christian  as  ingenuous  readers  have  be- 
lieved, he  would  not  have  needed  the  camouflage 
of  chivalry.  He  might  just  as  well  have  dedi- 
cated himself  to  God  and  to  the  Poor  (God's 
other  name)  without  helmet  and  lance.  He 
might  even  have  stayed  in  Argamasilla.  He 
might  have  spent  himself,  with  a  martyr's  hu- 
mihty,  in  the  service  of  those  who  suffer ;  he  might 
have  remedied  injustice;  he  might  have  filled  sim- 
ple hearts  with  a  renewing  emotion.  Instead  of 
imitating  knights-errant,  he  might  have  imitated 
the  saints  who  brought  salvation.  Others  had 
trod  this  path  before  his  time.  They  had  fol- 
lowed a  model,  and  in  their  following  they  had 
been  great  and  sad.  St.  Francis,  who  resolved 
to  imitate  Jesus,  and  willed  to  imitate  him  even 
in  the  wounds  of  his  hands  and  his  feet,  was  a 
purer  Don  Quixote.  Rienzi,  whose  soul  was 
fired  with  the  reading  of  Roman  history,  who 
dreamed  of  being  the  consul  of  a  new  republic, 
was  another  Don  Quixote,  more  unfortunate,  but 
more  authentic.  And  other  great  men,  like  these 
two,  have  been  exalted  by  the  examples  of  the 
past,  and  have  given  life  and  strength  without 
reserve,  resplendent  even  in  defeat. 

But  Don  Quixote  is  more  modest  and  less 
serious.  He  is  an  artist,  a  charlatan.  There  are 
certain  elements  of  sincerity  in  his  behavior:  he 
would  really  like  to  be  something  of  a  warrior, 


DON  QUIXOTE  267 

something  of  an  adventurer,  something  of  a  bene- 
factor. But  all  this  is  superficial:  there  is  just 
enough  of  it  to  give  a  tone  to  his  words  and  a 
justification  to  his  enterprise. 

On  close  examination  his  madness  appears  to 
be  a  clever  excuse  for  going  about  the  world 
and  getting  into  varied  and  easily  soluble  diffi- 
culties. There  is  indeed  an  element  of  spiritual 
and  bodily  brutality  in  his  enterprise,  a  confused 
desire  to  behold  disasters  and  to  share  in  them — 
provided  he  may  escape  without  serious  conse- 
quences. The  very  fact  that  he  plays  the  part 
of  an  aristocratic  paladin  saves  him  from  dan- 
gerous plights.  It  is  not  permissible  for  him  tp 
fight  with  boors — yet  he  knows  from  the  first 
that  he  will  have  chiefly  to  deal  with  boors. 

Don  Quixote  decides  to  seem  mad  because  he 
desires  to  seem  mad.  If  he  were  not  believed 
to  be  mad,  he  could  not  amuse  himself,  could  not 
wander  in  the  free  air,  could  not  expose  himself 
to  the  chances  of  the  unforeseen.  He  would  be 
shut  in  by  immediate  restraints.  He  would  find 
no  pardon  and  no  sport  in  those  that  he  might 
meet. 

All  this  explains  why  the  madness  of  Don 
Quixote  never  seems  grave  or  tragic.  If  it  were 
a  true  and  serious  madness,  there  would  be  some 
reaction,  some  sorrow,  some  pain  now  and  then, 
at  the  end  of  a  scuffle,  or  in  the  presence  of  a  hard 
reality.  On  the  contrary,  whenever  men  or  events 


268  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

show  him  that  he  has  made  a  mistake,  Don 
Quixote  remains  perfectly  calm.  He  admits  the 
mistake  at  once,  and  drops  back  into  the  com- 
monplace. At  times  he  himself  laughs  at  his 
feigned  error.  At  other  times  he  takes  refuge 
in  the  device  of  the  malevolent  enchanters — a 
story  that  serves  well  enough  for  Sancho,  who 
first  believes  it  and  finally  makes  use  of  it,  turn- 
ing it  against  his  master  when  he  tells  him  that 
the  three  peasant  girls  on  their  donkeys  are 
princesses  on  their  palfreys.^ 

Don  Quixote's  returns  to  the  truth  are  pain- 
less. A  man  truly  mad,  a  hero  with  convictions, 
would  experience  distress  and  anguish  at  so  many 
material  denials,  would  suffer  a  thousand  deaths 
in  finding  himself  so  obstinately  contradicted. 
But  Don  Quixote,  who  knows  his  own  game,  and 
is  befooling  friends  and  strangers  alike,  is  never 
moved  to  grief.  He  accepts  his  defeats  as  per- 
fectly natural,  and  regrets  only  his  bumps  and 
bruises — inevitable  inconveniences,  the  small 
change  with  which  he  pays  the  cost  of  his  unusual 
pastime.  Don  Quixote  is  capable  of  laughter. 
He  makes  fun  of  Sancho  and  of  himself.  His 
spirit  is  free.  He  carries  pleasant  invention  to 
the  utmost,  but  he  cannot  carry  his  pretense  to 
the  point  of  grief,  which  is  inimitable.  He  moves 
us  to  laughter  because  he  himself  cannot  weep. 

*  Part  II,  Chapter  X. 


DON  QUIXOTE  269 


This  is  no  calumny.  If  you  want  the  proofs, 
all  you  have  to  do  is  to  reread  the  book  with  an 
unprejudiced  spirit. 

There  is  in  the  Don  Quixote  a  central  point 
the  importance  of  which  has  not  been  recognized 
by  the  commentators.  This  central  point,  which 
supplies  the  key  to  the  whole  book,  is  the  delib- 
erate madness  assumed  in  the  Sierra  Morena.^ 
All  readers  will  recall  the  scene.  When  they 
have  reached  the  barren  mount  of  desolation, 
Don  Quixote  announces  to  Sancho  that  he  in- 
tends to  play  the  madman  to  the  honor  and  glory 
of  Dulcinea  until  Sancho  returns.  The  deceiver 
reveals  himself  to  the  simple  spectator.  He  in- 
serts a  confessed  madness  in  the  midst  of  his  gen- 
eral pretended  madness. 

He  begins  by  announcing  that  he  will  follow 
the  method  of  imitation,  but  that  his  imitation 
will  be  restrained — not  too  exhausting  nor  too 
perilous : 

I  intend  to  imitate  Amadis,  playing  here  the  desperate, 
raving,  and  furious  lover,  so  that  I  may  imitate  at  the  same 
time  the  valiant  Don  Roland. 

But  he  will  imitate  judiciously.  Roland's  mad- 
ness went  too  far: 

*  Part  I,  Chapter  XXV. 


270   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

And  although  I  do  not  intend  to  imitate  Roland  com- 
pletely, in  all  his  mad  deeds  and  words  and  thoughts,  yet  I 
will  copy  as  best  I  can  all  that  seems  to  me  most  essential. 

And  he  concludes  with  the  definite  statement 
of  his  clear  resolution: 

Mad  I  am  and  mad  I  must  be  until  thou  shalt  return  with 
the  reply.  ...  If  the  reply  be  kindly,  I  shall  cease  playing 
the  madman.  If  it  be  unkind,  I  shall  go  mad  in  very  truth, 
and  thus  I  shall  suffer  no  consciousness  of  my  pain. 

One  could  not  ask  a  more  expHcit  revelation 
of  Don  Quixote's  secret.  He  knows  that  he  is 
not  mad,  but  he  wishes  to  behave  as  if  he  were, 
and  his  mad  exploits  are  to  be  merely  in  imita- 
tion of  the  exploits  of  famous  madmen.  The 
method  which  he  confesses  in  this  one  case  of 
deliberate  madness  superposed  upon  his  primary 
madness  is  the  very  method  which  he  follows  in 
all  the  other  cases  in  which  he  does  not  confess. 

In  this  same  passage  is  to  be  found  his  theory 
— one  of  the  prof oundest  in  the  book — as  to  go- 
ing mad  without  cause  or  reason.  On  Sancho's 
asking  him  why  he  undertakes  so  hard  a  penance 
when  Dulcinea  has  given  him  no  cause,  Don 
Quixote  answers : 

There  lies  the  point  and  the  very  excellence  of  my  intent. 
For  the  knight-errant  who  goes  mad  for  just  cause  deserves 
no  thanks;  but  to  go  mad  without  just  cause  is  notable 
indeed. 


DON  QUIXOTE  271 

Proofs  that  the  madness  of  Don  Quixote  is 
deliberate  and  not  inevitable  are  to  be  found  on 
every  page.  He  is  well  aware  of  the  transfor- 
mation which  real  objects  must  undergo  to  be 
adapted  to  the  comedy  he  is  playing.  He  knows 
perfectly  well,  for  instance,  what  sort  of  a  person 
Dulcinea  really  is.^  But  he  is  not  satisfied  with 
the  image  of  the  gross,  hard-working  peasant  girl 
whom  he,  in  the  refinement  of  his  irony,  has  chosen 
to  be  the  lady  of  his  thought.  He  explains  to 
Sancho  that  since  there  cannot  be  any  perfect 
woman  in  the  w^orld,  he  has  chosen  the  lowest  of 
them  all  that  he  may  the  better  prove  the  power 
of  his  deforming  and  reforming  imagination:  "I 
have  fashioned  her  in  my  imagination  as  I  would 
desire  her  to  be."  When  Sancho  brings  his  re- 
port of  his  mission  to  the  fair  one,  Don  Quixote 
translates  it  phrase  for  phrase  into  his  own  lan- 
guage, for  he  knows  that  Sancho  is  describing 
the  truth  as  he  saw  it.  And  later  on,  when  the 
peasant  girls  appear  on  the  road  at  dawn,  and 
Sancho  would  have  Don  Quixote  believe  that 
they  are  Dulcinea  and  her  maidens,  Don  Quixote 
refuses  to  accept  the  hallucination,  for  the  rea- 
son that  it  is  imposed  upon  him  by  another.  He 
sees  the  women  as  they  really  are,  and  in  order 
not  to  reveal  his  trickery,  he  has  recourse  to  the 
old  story  of  the  enchanters  who  transform  ob- 

*  "It  is  enough  for  me  to  think  and  to  believe  that  she  is  beau- 
tiful and  virtuous":  Part  I,  Chapter  XXV. 


272  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

jects  in  his  very  presence.  But  he  finally  admits 
that  Dulcinea  is  a  fantastic  and  imaginary  per- 
sonage— and  this  no  real  madman  would  ever 
have  done/ 

In  still  other  cases  Don  Quixote  confesses  that 
he  has  been  mistaken,  and  is  conscious,  as  he 
says,  of  the  deceit  into  which  he  has  fallen."  But 
whenever  it  suits  his  fancy  he  sees  things  as  they 
are.  The  tavern  is  to  him  a  tavern  and  not  a 
castle ;  and  he  recognizes  that  the  helmet  of  Mam- 
brino  is  a  barber's  basin.  His  principle,  which 
should  have  revealed  the  seam  of  his  fiction,  is 
this  (and  it  is  the  one  truly  idealistic  motive  in 
the  whole  book) :  that  objects  in  themselves  have 
no  fast  and  inalienable  character,  but  vary  as  dif- 
ferent men  behold  them.  His  system  m.ght  be 
defined  as  an  instance  of  "the  will  to  believe," 
an  anticipation,  by  three  centuries,  of  the  theories 
of  pragmatism — unless  it  be  a  reflection,  after 
twenty  centuries,  of  the  theories  of  Protagoras. 

This  view  explains,  moreover,  the  obvious  com- 
mon sense  of  Don  Quixote.  All  whom  he  meets 
are  astonished  at  the  good  sense  of  his  discourse 
when  it  does  not  refer  to  matters  of  chivalry. 
They  call  him  "a  wise  fool."  And  at  the  end, 
sincere  once  more,  he  proclaims  that  he  is  not 
mad.     Does  he  not  openly  confess  that  he  in- 

*  Part  II,  Chapter  XXXII. 

'  Instances  in  Part  I,  Chapter  XLV,  and  Part  II,  Chapter  XL 


DON  QUIXOTE  273 

vented  outright  the  marvelous  phantasmagoria 
of  the  Cave  of  Montesinos? 

From  the  time  when  he  issues  from  the  sub- 
terranean world,  Sancho  himself  doubts  his 
truthfulness,  and  at  the  Duke's,  Don  Quixote 
makes  a  cynical  compact  with  his  squire:  "If 
you  will  beheve  my  Montesinos  story,  I  will  be- 
lieve your  story  about  Heaven."  ^  But  the 
shameless  invention  stands,  and  the  implied  con- 
fession was  in  reality  superfluous.^ 

Don  Quixote  does  not  succeed  in  remaining 
within  the  limits  of  perfect  pretense.  And  these 
slips  in  his  part  give  a  double  reenforcement  to 
our  discovery:  he  did  not  take  his  game  so  seri- 
ously as  to  carry  it  too  far.  Don  Quixote  is  a 
pretended  madman  who  betrays  himself  by  his 
mirth.  His  tranquillity  and  his  wit  depose 
against  him:  there  is  no  conflict  in  his  soul. 
Where  there  is  no  seriousness  there  can  be  no  con- 
flict. Don  Quixote  jests:  true  madmen  never 
jest. 


VI 


The  profundity  of  Don  Quiocote — and  there  is 
an  element  of  profundity  in  the  joker  of  La 
Mancha — lies  elsewhere.     For  the  methods   of 

*  "Sancho,  since  you  desire  me  to  believe  what  you  saw  in 
Heaven,  I  desire  you  to  believe  what  I  saw  in  the  Cave  of 
Montesinos":  Part  11,  Chapter  XLI. 

» See  Part  II,  Chapter  XXV. 


274   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Don  Quixote — deformation  and  symbolism — 
are  the  very  methods  of  modern  art,  and  have  a 
significance  which  goes  far  beyond  the  superficial 
contrasts  hitherto  seen  in  the  grotesque  epic. 

The  voluntary  deformation  of  objects  has  its 
beginning  in  arbitrary  idealism,  and  has  come  to 
be  recognized  as  an  essential  characteristic  of 
all  creative  art.  It  is  that  process  by  which  you 
see  only  what  you  want  to  see,  represent  only 
what  you  want  to  represent,  changing,  exagger- 
ating, or  reducing  even  that,  according  to  the 
internal  necessities  of  the  creative  will.  Don 
Quixote  is  in  this  sense  an  artist,  an  artist  in  life 
though  of  literary  origin,  a  true  modern  artist. 

He  is  a  symbolist  as  well,  and  a  satiric  sym- 
bolist. His  voluntary  errors  follow  a  preestab- 
lished  plan.  They  are  organically  related,  and 
grow  directly  out  of  an  ironic  judgment  on  the 
life  of  mankind.  His  apparently  mad  confu- 
sions reflect  the  discovery  of  hidden  likenesses, 
and  are  necessary  consequences  of  his  skepticism. 
Consider  the  best  known  of  these  pretended  er- 
rors in  recognition:  sheep  to  him  are  soldiers; 
windmills  are  robber  giants ;  taverns  are  castles ; 
inn-keepers  are  knights ;  basins  are  helmets ;  har- 
lots are  courtly  damsels;  serving-maids  are  en- 
amored ladies;  peasant  girls  are  Beatrices;  gal- 
ley-slaves are  innocent  men. 

In  order  to  avoid  compromising  himself  he 
attributes  these  mistakes  to  his  madness.     But 


DON  QUIXOTE  275 

they  are  not  casual:  they  reveal  the  hidalgo  as  a 
critical  and  unprejudiced  judge.  In  reality,  so 
he  thinks,  soldiers  are  sheep  led  to  the  slaughter; 
lordly  castles  are  but  taverns  in  disguise,  where 
hospitality  must  be  paid  for  by  servility;  giants 
are  windmills  hving  on  wind  and  theft;  social 
status  is  no  guarantee  of  purity;  maids  are  quite 
as  lovable  as  their  mistresses;  an  ignorant  peas- 
ant girl,  if  she  be  honest  and  unspoiled,  may  be 
the  inspiration  of  a  genius  that  can  recognize  her 
worth ;  prisoners  in  chains  upon  the  roadside  may 
be  more  innocent  than  the  jailors  who  are  drag- 
ging them  to  the  galleys. 

These  deliberate  identifications,  between  be- 
ings for  the  most  part  remote  and  unlike,  allow 
us  to  perceive  what  Don  Quixote  really  thought 
of  men.  He  had  meditated  in  his  loneliness,  and 
he  had  come  at  last  to  know  them  as  they  are. 
Like  all  those  who  finally  discover  the  nature  of 
their  fellow-beings,  he  had  no  choice  save  to  hate 
them  or  to  make  fun  of  them.  He  was  not  a 
hero  of  the  highest  order ;  he  preferred  to  laugh. 
So  he  decided  to  turn  knight,  that  others,  while 
thinking  him  their  fool,  might  serve  as  the  toys 
of  his  amusement. 

His  vengeance  was  successful — for  it  has  re- 
mained undiscovered  until  the  present  day.  But 
Don  Quixote  was  born  to  be  my  brother,  first 
according  to  the  letter,  now  according  to  the 
spirit.    He  and  I  understand  each  other. 


XXI 

KWANG-TZE 


The  idea  may  or  may  not  be  original  with 
me :  that  doesn't  matter.  In  any  case,  I  have  had 
it  for  a  long  time,  and  what  is  more,  I  believe 
it  to  be  true. 

I  believe  that  the  so-called  Renaissance  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  which  had  the 
discovery  of  classic  culture  as  one  of  its  causes 
and  one  of  its  effects,  will  ultimately  prove  to  be 
but  a  slight  affair  in  comparison  with  the  Re- 
naissance of  the  twentieth  and  twenty-first  cen- 
turies, which  will  be  due  to  the  discovery  of  ori- 
ental culture. 

This  new  Renaissance  will  bring  not  a  complete 
overturn — the  human  spirit  is  not  an  omelet — 
but  an  eager  change  in  the  direction  of  European 
and  American  thought  and  life. 

We  talk  of  a  universal  society  of  nations — and 

we  have  not  yet  formed  a  universal  society  of 

intelligence.     It  has  been  attempted    now    and 

then  during  the  last  hundred  years,  but  the  pre- 

276 


KWANG-TZE  277 

paratory  work  has  never  been  done,  and  without 
that  work  no  man,  though  he  be  a  Titan,  can  im- 
provise the  results. 

When  once  we  have  finished  samphng  and  can 
really  proceed  to  assimilate  the  four  or  five  civ- 
ilizations of  the  unknown  East,  there  will  ensue 
profound  changes  in  our  ideas  about  the  world 
and  about  life,  and  in  the  range  of  our  imagina- 
tion and  sensibility. 

Just  one  type  of  oriental  culture,  the  Hebraic, 
is  really  known  to  the  Western  world.  That  cul- 
ture, in  its  religious  forms,  and  particularly  in 
its  Christian  form,  was  assimilated  by  Europe 
in  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire.  And  our 
moral  life  still  centers  about  a  collection  of  Pal- 
estinian writings. 

But  as  yet  we  have  hardly  glanced  at  the  other 
oriental  cultures.  We  stand  only  in  the  vestibule. 
The  immense  storehouses  of  Asiatic  nurture  are 
scarcely  opened.  All  we  have  done  is  to  taste 
a  few  sips,  a  few  morsels. 

Just  as  in  the  two  centuries  that  preceded  our 
own  Renaissance  there  were  teachers  and  poets 
who  found  the  Greeks  and  Romans  for  them- 
selves without  waiting  for  the  humanists,  so  for 
the  last  two  centuries  there  has  been  in  Europe  a 
considerable  importation  of  oriental  thought  and 
art.  Translations,  contributions,  studies,  his- 
tories. Here  and  there  the  light  has  shone 
through.     Some  marvels  have  become  almost  fa- 


278  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

miliar:  Arabian  fancy  in  the  Thousand  and  One 
Nights;  Persian  lyric  in  the  Ruhaiyat;  Indian 
thought  in  the  Upanishads  and  in  Buddha; 
Japanese  painting. 

But  with  respect  to  the  whole,  these  importa- 
tions are  but  the  slightest  of  promises.  And  they 
have  been  limited  to  a  few  hundred  specialists 
and  a  few  thousand  lovers  of  poetic,  pictorial, 
and  metaphysical  curiosities. 

The  work  of  the  future  must  be  two-fold;  to 
select  the  best  from  the  entire  mass,  and  to  bring 
that  best  to  universal  knowledge.  There  are 
marvels  of  poetry  to  be  found,  prodigies  of  paint- 
ing and  of  sculpture,  triumphs  of  invention, 
depths  of  wisdom.  There  is  enough  in  the  East 
to  change  our  opinions  as  to  the  very  nature  of 
the  most  essential  realities,  and  to  double  the  key- 
board of  our  sentiments. 


n 


In  this  coming  Renaissance  a  major  part  will 
fall  to  China,  which  now  lies  prostrate.  We  are 
better  acquainted  with  the  Arabs,  who  are  nearer 
neighbors,  and  with  the  Indians,  through  a  sense 
of  philological  affinity,  and  because  India  is  a 
European  possession. 

China,  far  greater,  but  more  distant,  more 
enclosed,  more  heterogeneous,  and  more  timid. 


KWANG-TZE  279 

is  for  us  less  familiar  and  less  adored.  It  was 
once  the  fashion  to  exalt  China:  the  Chinese,  it 
was  claimed,  had  invented  everything.  But  re- 
action led  to  mockery.  And  now  we  talk  of 
JNIandarinism,  of  immobility,  of  petrifaction. 
But  even  supposing  that  a  civilization  that  has 
lasted  for  some  dozens  of  centuries  has  come  to 
a  stop  (and  who  can  say  that  it  has  stopped  in- 
deed?), it  remains  true  that  before  it  stopped  it 
had  progressed  for  a  long,  long  time.  And  of 
this  living  past  there  remain  thousands  of  works 
in  millions  of  volumes.  What  do  we  know  of 
these  works  ?  We  know  the  King,  translated  but 
seldom  read  and  little  understood;  the  Tdo  Teh 
King,  often  translated  and  none  the  less  obscure ; 
a  few  romances;  a  few  brief  poems.  The  Sin- 
ologues do  not  like  to  translate.  What  is  more, 
they  make  their  own  selections.  And  on  what 
basis  do  they  choose?  They  know  the  Chinese 
characters  and  bibliographies  and  historical  sys- 
tems, but  how  much  taste  have  they  for  poetry? 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  translations  of  poems 
of  the  Tang  dynasty  by  Hervey  de  Saint  Denis. 
Alas!  The  good  man  confesses  that  he  has  se- 
lected for  translation  those  poems  which  seem 
to  him  most  significant  as  historical  documents. 
What  a  treatment  for  poetry !  The  Tang  poems 
are  like  the  dust  on  a  butterfly's  wing,  and  those 
which  have  most  Ijrric  beauty  are  still  untrans- 
lated. 


280  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

So  it  goes.  China  has  a  marvelous  and  hmit- 
less  literature — drama,  philosophy,  history,  ro- 
mance. No  genre  is  missing.  One  may  draw  in 
one's  nets  heavy-laden,  as  in  a  lake  where  no  one 
has  fished  before.  Who  in  Europe  is  really  fa- 
miliar with  the  poets  Li-po,  Tu-fu,  Wen-kiun, 
Wang-wei,  Po-kin-i,  Su-kung-tu?  Or  the 
dramatists  Wang-chi-fu,  Ma-h-yuen,  Pe-gen-fu? 
Or  the  philosophers  Lieh-tze,  Yang-min,  Kwang- 
tze,  Yang-chu  ?  ^  These  are  the  first  names  that 
occur  to  me  out  of  many  that  I  have  seen  or 
heard.  They  are  but  a  handful  drawn  from  a  full 
granary.  And  no  one  of  these  men  is  inferior 
in  art  or  in  profundity  to  the  most  famous 
writers  of  Europe.  Yet  in  Europe  there  are 
scarcely  fifty  people  who  could  read  them  in  the 
original,  and  five  thousand  at  the  most  who  may 
have  read  some  fragments  or  pronounced  their 
names. 

In  Italy  it  is  worse  yet.  The  very  first  Sin- 
ologues were  Italians — Ricci  and  Desideri — and 
there  have  been  others  since.  But  they  have 
either  translated  little  or  have  translated  in  verse. 
Andreozzi  has  rendered  The  Tooth  of  Buddha  of 
Shenai-ghan  (the  one  Chinese  romance  that  has 
come  to  be  fairly  well  known,  thanks  to  a  popu- 
lar edition)  ;  Severini  has  translated  several 
poems,  but  more  from  the  Japanese  than  from 

^The  translator  assumes  no   responsibility  for  the  accuracy  of 
the  Chinese  names  cited  incidentally  in  this  essay. 


KWANG-TZE  281 

the  Chinese.  Massarani's  Book  of  Jade  is  trans- 
lated from  the  French  of  Judith  Gautier;  Mario 
Chini  has  given  us  an  Itahan  rendering  of  the 
Si-siang-ki  of  Wang-chi-fu,  but  it  is  based  on  the 
French  of  Julien,  and  is  merely  a  verse  transla- 
tion of  the  poetic  portions  of  the  work.  The  most 
active  Itahan  translator,  who  is  at  the  same  time 
the  dean  of  European  Sinologues  and  one  of  the 
most  truly  learned  of  them  all,  is  Carlo  Puini. 
To  him  and  to  Giovanni  Vacca,  his  scholar  and 
my  friend,  I  owe  my  knowledge  of  Kwang-tze, 
one  of  the  noblest  of  Chinese  philosophers,  and 
at  the  same  time  an  excellent  writer.^ 


Ill 


Kwang-tze  was  a  Taoist,  and  lived  in  the 
fourth  century  before  Christ.  Very  little  is 
known  about  his  life.  The  Chinese  are  not 
greedy  for  biographies.  They  say:  "He  flour- 
ished under  such  and  such  a  dynasty" — and  they 
ask  nothing  further. 

*  Translations  of  passages  from  Kwang-tze  are  to  be  found  in 
several  of  the  works  of  Puini,  and  chiefly  in  his  recent  Taoismo 
(Lanciano,  1917).  Translations  by  Vacca  appear  in  the  Leonardo 
(Florence,  1906).  Selections  appear  in  Buber's  Beden  und 
Oleichnisse  des  Tschuang-tse  (Leipzig,  1910).  There  are  complete 
English  translations  by  Giles  and  by  James  Legge.  Legge's  trans- 
lation appears  in  The  Texts  of  Taoism  (Oxford,  1891),  Volumes 
XXXIX  and  XL  of  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  In  the  present 
translation  Papini's  quotations  from  an  Italian  version  of  Kwang- 
tze  are  replaced  by  the  corresponding  passages  of  Legge's  transla- 
tion. 


282  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

To  be  a  Taoist  means  to  be  a  follower — but  an 
intelligent  follower — of  the  doctrine  attributed 
to  Lao-tze,  which  is  condensed  in  the  famous  and 
obscure  Tdo  Teh  King. 

Tao  means  "the  way."  But  in  Taoism  it 
means  the  principle,  the  germinating  force  of  the 
world.  This  principle,  from  which  all  being  is 
derived,  animates  the  world  continually  as  Teh, 
that  is,  as  potential  energy.  The  development 
of  Teh  is  Wu-wei,  or  "inaction."  In  other  words, 
when  nature  acts  spontaneously  it  is  perfect. 
Even  so  man  should  act,  relaxing  himself.  If 
he  tries  to  modify,  to  check,  to  rule,  to  find  a 
purpose,  he  ruins  everything.  Man  has  set  rea- 
son and  knowledge  over  against  natural  spon- 
taneousness,  has  tried  to  do  too  much;  and  for 
this  cause  he  is  unhappy.  On  the  contrary,  he 
should  but  obey  his  own  body,  living  in  pftrity, 
that  is,  in  accordance  with  nature.  Thus  the 
spirit  itself  is  saved,  all  else  is  transformed  into 
spirit,  and  perfection  and  immortality  are  at- 
tained. 

Taoism  in  its  most  constant  aspect  is  then  a 
sort  of  Rousseauism  extended  from  the  human 
creature  to  the  entire  field  of  existence.  It  im- 
plies acceptance,  non-resistance,  inaction.  It  is, 
in  short,  a  recognition  of  that  uselessness  which 
is  inscribed  at  the  end  of  all  human  exertion. 
When  Taoism  got  down  to  the  poets  and  the  peo- 
ple it  lost  itself  in  incantations,  in  materialistic 


KWANG-TZE  283 

attempts  to  win  a  forced  iminoii;ality,  in  semi- 
scientific  formalism.  But  in  Lao-tze  and  in  the 
greatest  philosophers  of  the  school,  it  is  illumined 
with  paradoxical  magnificence.  Confucianism 
seems  by  comparison  a  meticulous  and  utilitarian 
system  of  morality  designed  to  bring  up  honest 
subjects  for  the  State,  and  Buddhism  a  desperate 
renunciation  of  nature  and  of  reason  alike,  a  re- 
fined aneesthetic  for  the  annihilation  of  universal 
gi'ief.  Lao-tze  does  not  seek  to  change  men  or 
to  annihilate  them,  but  he  points  out  the  path 
by  which,  following  again  the  line  of  natural  des- 
tiny, they  may  obtain  peace  and  immortality. 
"For  Lao-tze,"  Puini  says,  "the  man  who  enters 
into  society  is  the  comic  figure  par  excellence. 
And  his  ridiculousness  increases  in  proportion  as 
he  complicates  the  artificial  manner  of  his  life." 
Putting  it  roughly,  and  leaving  aside  the  other 
points  of  the  doctrine,  we  may  say  that  Lao-tze 
was  a  Rousseau  who  appeared  six  centuries  be- 
fore Christ,  instead  of  coming  eighteen  centuries 
after  Christ. 

By  way  of  a  final  comparison  with  Europeans, 
let  me  recall  the  fact  that  Kwang-tze,  since  he 
lived  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  was  the 
contemporary  of  Plato  and  of  Aristotle — to  re- 
main in  the  philosophical  field.  Unlike  them, 
however,  he  did  not  limit  himself  to  the  study  of 
logic,  physics,  and  metaphysics,  but  concerned 


284  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

himself  almost  exclusively  with  that  which  is  of 
most  importance  to  man :  life. 


IV 


Though  he  was  contemporary  with  Plato,  he 
makes  us  think  rather  of  Gorgias  or  of  the 
Pyrrhonists.  Not  only  is  man's  knowledge  of 
little  or  no  extent,  according  to  Kwang-tze,  but 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  transmit  it: 

What  the  world  thinks  the  most  valuable  exhibition  of  the 
Tao  is  to  be  found  in  books.  But  books  are  only  a  collection 
of  words.  Words  have  what  is  valuable  in  them; — what  is 
valuable  in  words  is  the  ideas  they  convey.  But  those  ideas 
are  a  sequence  of  something  else ; — and  what  that  something 
else  is  cannot  be  conveyed  by  words.  When  the  world,  be- 
cause of  the  value  which  it  attaches  to  words,  commits  them 
to  books,  that  for  which  it  so  values  them  may  not  deserve 
to  be  valued; — because  that  which  it  values  is  not  what  is 
really  valuable. 

Thus  it  is  that  what  we  look  at  and  can  see  is  (only) 
the  outward  form  and  colour,  and  what  we  listen  to  and 
can  hear  is  (only)  names  and  sounds.  Alas !  that  men  of 
the  world  should  think  that  form  and  colour,  name  and 
sound,  should  be  sufficient  to  give  them  the  real  nature  of 
the  Tao.  The  form  and  colour,  the  name  and  sound,  are 
certainly  not  sufficient  to  convey  its  real  nature;  and  so  it 
is  that  "the  wise  do  not  speak  and  those  who  do  speak  are 
not  wise."    How  should  the  world  know  that  real  nature  ?  ^ 

*Legge's  translation  (see  preceding  note),  Vol.  XXXIX,  p.  343. 


KWANG-TZE  285 

And  it  is  worse  yet  in  the  case  of  the  writings 
of  the  ancients: 

Duke  Hwan,  seated  above  in  his  hall,  was  (once)  reading 
a  book,  and  the  wheelwright  Phien  was  making  a  wheel  be- 
low it.  Laying  aside  his  hammer  and  chisel,  Phien  went  up 
the  steps,  and  said,  "I  venture  to  ask  your  Grace  what 
words  you  are  reading?"  The  duke  said,  "The  words  of 
the  sages."  "Are  those  sages  alive?"  Phien  continued. 
"They  are  dead,"  was  the  reply.  "Then,"  said  the  other, 
"what  you,  my  Ruler,  are  reading  are  only  the  dregs  and 
sediments  of  those  old  men."  The  duke  said,  "How  should 
you,  a  wheelwright,  have  anything  to  say  about  the  book 
which  I  am  reading?  If  you  can  exj^lain  yourself,  very  well; 
if  you  cannot,  you  shall  die !"  The  wheelwright  said,  "Your 
servant  will  look  at  the  thing  from  the  point  of  view  of  his 
own  art.  In  making  a  wheel,  if  I  proceed  gently,  that  is 
pleasant  enough,  but  the  workmanship  is  not  strong;  if  I 
proceed  violently,  that  is  toilsome  and  the  joinings  do  not 
fit.  If  the  movements  of  my  hand  are  neither  (too)  gentle 
nor  (too)  violent,  the  idea  in  my  mind  is  realised.  But  I 
cannot  tell  (how  to  do  this)  by  word  of  mouth; — there  is 
a  knack  in  it.  I  cannot  teach  the  knack  to  my  son,  nor  can 
my  son  learn  it  from  me.  Thus  it  is  that  I  am  in  my  seven- 
tieth year,  and  am  (still)  making  wheels  in  my  old  age. 
But  these  ancients,  and  what  it  was  not  possible  for  them 
to  convey,  are  dead  and  gone : — so  then  what  you,  my  Ruler, 
are  reading  is  but  their  dregs  and  sediments !"  ^ 

Kwang-tze  does  not  even  believe  that  knowl- 
edge leads  to  moral  improvements:  on  the  con- 
trary, knowledge  and  law  seem  to  him  the  causes 
of  the  greatest  ills: 

*  Vol.  XXXIX,  pp.  343-44. 


286  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

According  to  my  idea,  those  who  know  well  to  govern 
mankind  would  not  act  so.  The  people  had  their  regular 
and  constant  nature: — they  wove  and  made  themselves 
clothes;  they  tilled  the  ground  and  got  food.  This  was 
their  common  faculty.  They  were  all  one  in  this,  and  did 
not  form  themselves  into  separate  classes;  so  were  they 
constituted  and  left  to  their  natural  tendencies.  .  .  .  But 
when  the  sagely  men  apjjeared,  limping  and  wheeling  about 
in  (the  exercise  of)  benevolence,  pressing  along  and  stand- 
ing on  tiptoe  in  the  doing  of  righteousness,  then  men  uni- 
versally began  to  be  perplexed.  (Those  sages  also)  went 
to  excess  in  their  performances  of  music,  and  in  their 
gesticulations  in  the  practice  of  ceremonies,  and  then  men 
began  to  be  separated  from  one  another.^ 

In  the  time  of  (the  Ti)  Ho-hsii,  the  people  occupied  their 
dwellings  without  knowing  what  they  were  doing,  and 
walked  out  without  knowing  where  they  were  going.  They 
filled  their  mouths  with  food  and  were  glad;  they  slapped 
their  stomachs  to  express  their  satisfaction.  This  was  all 
the  ability  which  they  possessed.  But  when  the  sagely 
men  appeared,  with  their  bendings  and  stoppings  in  cere- 
monies and  music  to  adjust  the  persons  of  all,  and  hanging 
up  their  benevolence  and  righteousness  to  excite  the 
endeavours  of  all  to  reach  them,  in  order  to  comfort  their 
minds,  then  the  people  began  to  stump  and  limp  about  in 
their  love  of  knowledge,  and  strove  with  one  another  in  their 
pursuit  of  gain,  so  that  there  was  no  stopping  them: — this 
was  the  error  of  those  sagely  men.^ 

^Vol.  XXXIX,  pp.  277-78. 

'Vol.  XXXIX,  pp.  279-80.  Compare  Dostoevsky's  Journal  of 
an  Author,  April,  1877:  "They  came  to  know  and  to  love  sadness; 
they  longed  for  suffering;  and  said  that  truth  could  be  achieved 
by  suffering  alone.  Then  science  appeared  among  them.  When 
they  were  angered,  they  began  to  talk  of  brotherhood  and 
humanity,  and  conceived  those  ideas.  When  they  committed  crime, 
they  invented  justice  and  prescribed  for  themselves  whole  codes 


KWANG-TZE  287 

That  which  is  the  perfectly  correct  path  is  not  to  lose 
the  real  character  of  the  nature  with  which  we  are  en- 
dowed. Hence  the  union  (of  parts)  should  not  be  con- 
sidered redundance,  nor  their  divergence  superfluity;  what 
is  long  should  not  be  considered  too  long,  nor  what  is  short 
too  short.  A  duck's  legs,  for  instance,  are  short,  but  if  we 
try  to  lengthen  them,  it  occasions  pain;  and  a  crane's  legs 
are  long,  but  if  we  try  to  cut  off  a  portion  of  them,  it  pro- 
duces grief.^ 

Therefore  if  an  end  were  put  to  sageness  and  wisdom 
put  away,  the  great  robbers  would  cease  to  arise.  If  jade 
were  put  away  and  pearls  broken  to  bits,  the  small  thieves 
would  not  appear.  If  tallies  were  burned  and  seals  broken 
in  pieces,  the  people  would  become  simple  and  unsophisti- 
cated. If  pecks  were  destroyed  and  steelyards  snapped  in 
two,  the  people  would  have  no  wrangling.  If  the  rules  of 
the  sages  were  entirely  set  aside  in  the  world,  a  beginning 
might  be  made  of  reasoning  with  the  people.^ 

Looking  at  the  subject  in  this  way,  we  see  that  good  men 
do  not  arise  without  having  the  principles  of  the  sages, 
and  that  Kih  could  not  have  pursued  his  course  without  the 
same  principles.  But  the  good  men  in  the  world  are  few, 
and  those  who  are  not  good  are  many; — it  follows  that 
the  sages  benefit  the  world  in  a  few  instances  and  injure  it 
in  many.^ 

The  less  one  does,  so  Kwang-tze  seems  to  say, 
the  better  off  one  is.  That  dolce  far  niente  which 
the  Abbe  Galiani  praised  in  our  golden  eight- 

of  laws  to  maintain  it,  and  to  maintain  the  codes  they  set  up  a 
guillotine."  (This  translation  is  quoted  from  Pages  from  the 
Journal  of  an  Author,  translated  by  S.  Koteliansky  and  J.  M. 
Murry,  Boston,  1916.     Papini  quotes  in  Italian.) 

^Vol.  XXXIX,  p.  270.  "Vol.  XXXIX,  p.  284. 

«  Vol.  XXXIX,  p.  286. 


288  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

eenth  century  is  the  ideal  of  Taoism — not  in  the 
beggar's  sense  of  not  working,  but  in  the  sense 
of  not  changing  that  which  nature  establishes 
and  impels.  Such  inaction  is  regarded  by  the 
Taoists  as  the  indispensable  means  of  ascending 
to  the  state  of  primal  spontaneity: 

Come  and  I  will  tell  you  the  perfect  Tao.  .  .  .  You  must 
be  still;  you  must  be  pure;  not  subjecting  your  body  to 
toil,  not  agitating  your  vital  force; — then  you  may  live  for 
long.  When  your  eyes  see  nothing,  your  ears  hear  nothing, 
and  your  mind  knows  nothing,  your  spirit  will  keep  your 
body,  and  the  body  will  live  long.  Watch  over  what  is 
within  you,  shut  up  the  avenues  that  connect  you  with  what 
is  external; — much  knowledge  is  pernicious.  .  .  .  Watch 
over  and  keep  your  body,  and  all  things  will  of  themselves 
give  it  vigour.  I  maintain  the  (original)  unity  (of  these 
elements),  and  dwell  in  the  harmony  of  them.  In  this  way 
I  have  cultivated  myself  for  one  thousand  and  two  hundred 
years,  and  my  bodily  form  has  undergone  no  decay.^ 

It  is  with  life  as  it  is  with  implements.  Thus 
spake  the  cook  of  King  Hui: 

A  good  cook  changes  his  knife  every  year; — (it  may  have 
been  injured)  in  cutting;  an  ordinary  cook  changes  his 
every  month; — (it  may  have  been)  broken.  Now  my  knife 
has  been  in  use  for  nineteen  years;  it  has  cut  up  several 
thousand  oxen,  and  yet  its  edge  is  as  sharp  as  if  it  had 
newly  come  from  the  whetstone.^ 

Kwang-tze  does  not  exalt  deathlessness  as  do 
the  orthodox  Taoists.    He  knows  how  little  worth 

^Vol.  XXXIX,  pp.  298-99.  'Vol.  XXXIX,  p.  199. 


KWANG-TZE  289 

while  life  really  is  to  one  who  looks  at  it  with 
clear  eyes  and  a  strong  heart: 

I  will  now  tell  you^  Sir,  my  views  about  the  condition  of 
man.  The  eyes  wish  to  look  on  beauty;  the  ears  to  hear 
music;  the  mouth  to  enjoy  flavours;  the  will  to  be  gratified. 
The  greatest  longevity  man  can  reach  is  a  hundred  years; 
a  medium  longevity  is  eighty  years;  the  lowest  longevity  is 
sixty.  Take  away  sickness,  pining,  bereavement,  mourn- 
ing, anxieties,  and  calamities,  the  times  when,  in  any  of 
these,  one  can  open  his  mouth  and  laugh,  are  only  four  or 
five  days  in  a  month.  Heaven  and  earth  have  no  limit  of 
duration,  but  the  death  of  man  has  its   (appointed)  time.^ 

Death  has  no  terror  for  Kwang-tze.  Man 
comes  and  goes ;  the  life  of  the  spirit  continues : 

He  has  life;  he  has  death;  he  comes  forth;  he  enters; 
but  we  do  not  see  his  form; — all  this  is  what  is  called  the 
door  of  Heaven.^ 

Long  before  the  time  of  Calderon,  life  seemed 
to  Kwang-tze  a  dream  and  nothing  more: 

Those  who  dream  of  (the  pleasures  of)  drinking  may  in 
the  morning  wail  and  weep;  those  who  dream  of  wailing 
and  weeping  may  in  the  morning  be  going  out  to  hunt. 
When  they  were  dreaming  they  did  not  know  it  was  a 
dream;  in  their  dream  they  may  even  have  tried  to  interpret 
it;  but  when  they  awoke  they  knew  that  it  was  a  dream. 
And  there  is  the  great  awaking,  after  which  we  shall  know 
that  this  life  was  a  great  dream.  All  the  while,  the  stupid 
think  they  are  awake,  and  with  nice  discrimination  insist 
on  their  knowledge;  now  playing  the  part  of  rulers,  and 
now  of  grooms.     Bigoted  was  that  Khiu!     He  and  you  are 

^Vol.  XL,  pp.  174-75.  ^'Vol.  XL,  p.  85. 


290  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

both   dreaming.      I   who   say  that  you  are  dreaming  am 
dreaming  myself.^ 

Nay  more,  death  is  preferable  to  life :  long  be- 
fore the  time  of  Hamlet,  Kwang-tze  questioned 
the  skulls  of  the  dead  and  learned  from  mouths 
of  bone  such  truths  as  mouths  of  flesh  do  not 
reveal: 

When  Kwang-tze  went  to  Khu,  he  saw  an  empty  skull, 
bleached  indeed,  but  still  retaining  its  shape.  Tapping  it 
with  his  horse-switch,  he  asked  it,  saying,  "Did  you,  Sir, 
in  your  greed  of  life,  fail  in  the  lessons  of  reason,  and  come 
to  this?  Or  did  you  do  so,  in  the  service  of  a  perishing 
state,  by  the  punishment  of  the  axe?  Or  was  it  through 
your  evil  conduct,  reflecting  disgrace  on  your  parents  and 
on  your  wife  and  children?  Or  was  it  through  your  hard 
endurances  of  cold  and  hunger?  Or  was  it  that  you  had 
completed  your  term  of  life  ?" 

Having  given  expression  to  these  questions,  he  took  up 
the  skull  and  made  a  pillow  of  it  when  he  went  to  sleep. 
At  midnight  the  skull  appeared  to  him  in  a  dream,  and  said, 
"What  you  said  to  me  was  after  the  fashion  of  an  orator. 
All  your  words  were  about  the  entanglements  of  men  in 
their  lifetime.  There  are  none  of  those  things  after  death. 
Would  you  like  to  hear  me,  Sir,  tell  you  about  death?"  "I 
should,"  said  Kwang-tze,  and  the  skull  resumed:  "In  death 
there  are  not  (the  distinctions  of)  ruler  above  and  minister 
below.  There  are  none  of  the  phenomena  of  the  four  sea- 
sons. Tranquil  and  at  ease,  our  years  are  those  of  heaven 
and  earth.     No  king  in  his  court  has  greater  enjoyment 

»Vol.  XXXIX,  pp.  194-95.  On  this  passage  see  Farinelli,  La 
vita  i  un  sogno,  Turin,  1916,  Vol.  I,  pp.  21  and  256.  Farinelli, 
however,  does  not  refer  to  a  Chinese  comedy  which  is  built  entirely 
on  this  idea.  It  is  by  Chi-yuen,  and  is  called  Hoang-liang-mong 
{The  Dream  of  the  Yellow  Millet)  and  has  a  Taoist  thesis. 


KWANG-TZE  291 

than  we  have."  Kwang-tze  di3  not  believe  it,  and  said,  "If 
I  could  get  the  Ruler  of  our  Destiny  to  restore  your  body 
to  life  with  its  bones  and  flesh  and  skin,  and  to  give  you 
back  your  father  and  mother,  your  wife  and  children,  and 
all  your  village  acquaintances,  would  you  wish  me  to  do 
so?"  The  skull  stared  fixedly  at  him,  knitted  its  brows, 
and  said,  "How  should  I  cast  away  the  enjoyment  of  my 
royal  court,  and  undertake  again  the  toils  of  life  among 
mankind  ?"  ^ 

Some  reader  will  exclaim,  at  this  point,  that 
Kwang-tze  brings  us  nothing  new,  that  he  is  just 
a  mixture  of  Montaigne,  Rousseau,  and  Leo- 
pardi,  with  a  Chinese  coloring. 

Even  if  this  were  true,  would  the  fact  that 
he  preceded  these  men  by  a  score  of  centuries  be 
of  no  significance?  If  intellectual  contacts  be- 
tween the  East  and  the  West  had  always  been 
as  free  as  they  are  today,  how  many  men  who 
have  seemed  to  us  the  discoverers  of  new  worlds 
of  thought  would  have  appeared  rather  as  late 
comers  and  copyists!  How  many  truths  we 
should  have  learned  far  earlier! 

But  the  kernel  of  Kwang-tze's  doctrine  is  new 
for  modern  Europe.  His  Wu-wei,  or  inaction, 
is  the  absolute  opposite  of  our  energetic  and  ex- 
hausting manner  of  life.  Our  age  seems  to  have 
as  its  motto  the  words  of  Ibsen:  "It  makes  little 
difference  what  one  does;  the  important  thing  is 
to  be  doing.  All  in  all,  we  may  call  ourselves  a 
race  of  doers."    Jesus,  an  oriental,  felt  the  folly 

» Vol.  XL,  pp.  6-7. 


292  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

of  this  perpetual  concern  for  the  body  and  the 
needs  of  the  body,  and  expressed  it  in  imagina- 
tive form  in  his  sayings  about  food  and  clothing: 
the  fowls  of  the  air  sow  not,  yet  God  feedeth 
them;  the  lilies  of  the  field  spin  not,  yet  even 
Solomon  was  not  so  gloriously  arrayed.  But 
these  words  of  Jesus  have  been  either  misunder- 
stood or  distorted  into  some  sense  other  than  the 
true  sense,  which  is  the  Taoist  sense.  They  ex- 
press a  profound  confidence  that  nature  will  pro- 
vide for  all  that  is  really  needful  if  only  man  will 
refrain  from  stirring  up  vain  desires  for  su- 
perfluous goods.  In  Europe  the  praise  of  inac- 
tion is  hardly  to  be  found  before  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  even  then  it  is  rather  a  witty  tour 
de  force  than  the  utterance  of  a  serious  con- 
viction.^ 

Christian  Europe,  instead  of  converting  the 
Jews,  has  been  converted  to  the  Jewish  attitude : 
Christ  has  been  crucified  again  and  again  by  the 
demons  of  industrial  and  mercantile  civilization. 
For  the  essential  purpose  of  that  civilization  is 
this :  to  create  as  many  needs  as  possible  in  order 
that  we  may  work  to  satisfy  them  as  best  we  can. 

The  Taoists  in  general,  and  Kwang-tze  in  par- 
ticular, have  an  excellent  antidote  for  that  Euro- 
pean malady  of  doing,  undoing,  doing  over,  and 
overdoing,  which  wastes  and  annihilates  us  all. 

*The  idea  of  inaction  is  treated,  with  historical  notes  as  to  ita 
development,  in  my  book  L'altra  metd,  Milan,  1912. 


KWANG-TZE  293 

In  weakness  and  in  docility  lies  true  strength, 
according  to  Lao-tze  and  his  followers.  Con- 
sider, they  say,  the  instance  of  water:  there  is 
nothing  more  gentle,  yet  nothing  that  so  over- 
whelms. Christianity  prescribes  non-resistance 
to  evil,  as  a  consequence  of  love.  Taoism,  long 
before,  had  taught  that  perfection  and  wisdom 
consist  in  non-resistance  to  the  entire  universe. 
Thus  at  the  heart  of  this  apparent  pessimism 
there  is  an  implicit  optimistic  faith,  faith  in  the 
original  goodness  of  reality  and  of  its  principle, 
the  Tao.  In  other  Chinese  writers  this  assump- 
tion of  natural  goodness  is  crystallized  in  the 
idea  of  the  natural  goodness  of  man,  and — in 
sharp  contrast  with  the  doctrine  of  original  sin, 
the  most  profound  and  terrible  doctrine  of  Chris- 
tianity— becomes  the  postulate  of  common  mo- 
rality centuries  before  Rousseau.  The  Book  of 
the  Three  Words  ( S an-tze-hing )  of  Wang-pe- 
heu,  which  is  used  for  teaching  children  to  read, 
begins  thus:  "The  character  of  man  is  essentially 
good." 

But  it  is  not  impossible  to  dissociate  the  the- 
ories of  primitive  perfection  and  of  inaction — 
as  indeed  Kwang-tze  has  done  in  some  measure. 
No  Christian  and  no  European  philosopher 
doubts  that  man  was  an  evil  beast  to  start  with, 
and  that  such  in  essence  he  has  remained.  And 
it  is  perfectly  clear,  to  any  one  who  reviews  the 
daily  round  of  human  activities,  that  man  does 


294  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

too  much,  and  that  by  this  excess  he  well-nigh 
prevents  the  true  inner  humanization  of  his  bestial 
self — for  nearly  all  of  our  daily  acts  tend  rather 
to  satisfy  our  native  bestial  instincts  in  a  more 
complex,  refined,  safe,  and  expensive  manner, 
than  to  correct  the  original  sin  of  our  swinish 
and  tigerish  nature.  The  primitive  man  had  but 
his  nails  and  his  teeth  to  fight  his  rival  for  the 
body  of  a  stag:  the  civilized  man  has  submarines, 
airplanes,  torpedoes,  bombs,  flame-throwers,  gas, 
hand-grenades,  shrapnel,  and  high  explosives  to 
fight  his  rival  for  a  province.  Greed  and  ferocity 
have  been  magnified  and  armed  by  science:  the 
human  beast  is  unchanged. 

Now  the  Chinese  idea  of  inaction  may  help  us 
Europeans  to  discredit  the  type  of  action  that 
is  merely  an  agonizing  struggle  to  obtain  satis- 
factions that  do  not  satisfy.  Such,  indeed,  is  all 
action  that  does  not  subserve  the  only  purpose 
worthy  of  man:  the  overcoming  of  his  bestial 
nature  by  the  substitution  of  sentiments,  habits, 
checks,  and  reason.  Christianity  tells  us  what  to 
do;  Taoism  tells  us  what  not  to  do.  In  order  that 
we  may  do  what  is  essential  and  divine,  we  must 
refrain  from  doing  that  which  is  transitory  and 
useless.  Taoism  does  not  regard  the  immortal 
soul  as  something  perfect  and  ready-made,  placed 
in  the  body  to  give  it  life :  the  soul  is  a  conquest, 
a  terminus,  a  reward,  a  sublimation  and  a  trans- 
substantiation  of  the  body.    We  have  at  birth  but 


KWANG-TZE  295 

a  potential  soul:  we  must  fashion  our  souls  for 
ourselves,  without  wasting  our  strength  in  ex- 
ternal endeavors,  in  bodily  labors  for  the  service 
of  the  body.  While  Aristotle  was  plodding 
through  the  commonplaces  of  formal  morality, 
Kwang-tze  was  setting  up  one  of  the  pillars  of 
Christian  super-wisdom.  Twenty-three  centuries 
ago  his  voice  condemned  the  exhausting  mercan- 
tile superstition  of  our  day. 


XXII 
CALDERON  ^ 


Arturo  Farinelli  is  an  extraordinary  man. 
Marino  wrote: 

The  poet  aims  to  stir  the  soul  to  wonder — 

Farinelli  seems  to  be  carrying  the  same  purpose 
into  the  field  of  literary  history. 

The  first  effect  his  books  produce  upon  the 
reader  is  a  sense  of  astonishment.  Every  one 
of  his  volumes  is  like  one  of  those  caves  wherein 
Persian  fancy  pictures  trees  laden  with  rubies, 
stalactites  of  emerald,  masses  of  topaz,  heaps 
of  diamonds.  Everything  gleams  and  flashes 
in  the  multiple  reflections.  If  a  child  enters,  he 
plays  with  the  bright  toys.  If  a  miser  enters,  he 
crams  them  in  his  M^allet. 

It  is  not  precious  stones  that  shine  in  the  works 
of  Farinelli,  but  fragments  and  gems  of  poetry, 
of  many  kinds  and  of  many  ages.  This  jeweler 
of  the  spirit  has  in  store    all    the   treasures    of 

*  Written  d  propos  of  Farinelli's  La  vita  ^  un  sogno  ("Life  is  a 
Dream"),  Vols.  I  and  II,  Turin,  1916. 


i 


CALDERON  297 

thought,  and  he  offers  them  by  the  handful,  by 
the  shovelful,  by  the  cartful,  making  them  spar- 
kle under  the  eager  eyes  of  his  readers.  For  him 
there  are  no  Alps  nor  Pyrenees,  no  chains  that 
cannot  be  broken,  no  oceans  that  separate. 
Every  realm  pays  him  tribute,  every  land  offers 
him  its  tithe  of  beauty.  He  has  dug  deeply  in 
fields  where  others  have  but  turned  the  sod.  He 
has  followed  close  after  the  pioneers  in  the  ex- 
ploration of  unfamiliar  lands.  If  we  in  Italy 
were  accustomed  to  elect  princes,  Farinelli  would 
certainly  be  the  rightful  prince  of  literary  eru- 
dition. 

Nor  does  he  cast  his  Titanic  learning  about  in 
haphazard  fragments  and  fagots,  as  so  many 
have  done,  especially  in  Germany.  He  can  ar- 
range and  organize  his  magnificent  material. 
He  can  embody  it  in  a  continuous  discourse 
which  moves  on  toward  a  single  conclusion, 
though  it  may  assume  at  times  the  color  of  im- 
agery, or  the  power  of  eloquence.  Farinelli  is 
not  a  pure  scholar,  but  a  great  scholar  who 
makes  use  of  his  erudition  as  an  architect  makes 
use  of  stones  and  bricks.  He  has  ideas,  he  has 
feeling;  and  he  knows  the  most  notable  expres- 
sions of  ideas  and  of  feelings  in  every  clime  and 
every  period.  His  books  therefore  are  not  ex- 
ternal histories  of  literary  genres,  but  histories  of 
single  passions  or  of  single  theories  followed 
through  the  masterpieces  of  all  literatures. 


298  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

Such  in  particular  is  his  last  work,  on  Cal- 
deron's  Life  is  a  Dream.  For  this  work,  when 
the  third  volume  shall  also  have  appeared,  will 
be  a  universal  history  of  the  concept  of  life  as 
nullity  and  illusion. 


Farinelli  states  his  intention  with  perfect 
frankness : 

Calderon  has  been  to  me  merely  a  pretext  for  following 
through  the  cycles  of  the  ages  that  fundamental  concept 
of  life  on  which  he  built  the  famous  drama  which  so  many 
praise  and  so  few  understand. 

The  reader  must  not  expect  to  find  here  a 
critical  commentary  of  the  usual  sort.  In  the 
whole  first  volume  the  drama  of  Calderon  is 
scarcely  mentioned.  That  volume  contains  in- 
stead a  complete  history,  rich  in  information  and 
in  comparisons,  of  those  concepts  of  human  life 
which  begin  with  Buddha  and  end  with  the  Span- 
ish mystics  of  the  Golden  Age.  In  the  second 
volume  Farinelli  examines  the  entire  literary 
work  of  Calderon  with  a  view  to  the  full  discov- 
ery of  his  conception  of  the  world  and  of  life. 
Only  toward  the  end  of  the  volume  does  he  come 
to  a  direct  analysis  of  the  famous  drama.  Thus 
the  play  is  treated  as  a  single  link  in  the  chain  of 
this  universal  epic  of  "life  as  a  dream" — a  link 


CALDERON  299 

which  is  central  and  precious,  but  which  appears 
merely  incidental  as  we  look  back  over  the  cen- 
turies. Here  we  have  a  definitive  history  of  a 
single  human  intuition,  not  an  exclusive  study  of 
one  dramatic  composition.  The  vicissitudes  of  a 
certain  skeptical  and  pessimistic  view  of  life  are 
traced  through  religions,  mysticisms,  mytholo- 
gies, through  fiction  and  through  philosophy — 
with  an  intensive  treatment  of  a  particular  Span- 
ish dramatic  masterpiece  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. 

The  fact  that  this  play  stands  out  as  the  cen- 
tre of  the  research  is  perhaps  a  result  of  the  per- 
sonal predilections  of  Farinelli,  who  has  devoted 
the  better  part  of  his  life  to  Spanish  studies. 
All  students  of  comparative  literature  are  ac- 
quainted with  his  early  studies  of  Calderon.  But 
those  studies  were  primarily  bibliographical. 
Now  the  scholar  gives  place  to  the  thinker;  and 
the  thinker  proceeds  from  the  examination  of  a 
particular  plot  to  the  contemplation  of  a  moral 
drama  which  has  the  entire  earth  as  its  stage  and 
the  saddest  geniuses  of  humanity  as  its  dramatis 
personam. 

Calderon's  play  has  perhaps  received  more 
honor  than  it  deserves.  It  was  immensely  popu- 
lar in  Europe  in  the  Romantic  period,  thanks  in 
particular  to  the  two  Schlegels  and  to  other 
German  critics.  For  a  time  it  seemed  the  choic- 
est fruit  of  Spanish  genius.     Some  critics  rated 


300   FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

it  above  the  greatest  creations  of  Shakespeare. 
It  was  translated  into  all  languages.  It  was  re- 
vived on  the  stage.  It  was  tormented  by  the 
speciousness  of  commentators  and  text-makers. 
In  Italy,  where  a  translation,  or  rather  adapta- 
tion, had  been  made  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
it  became  popular  again  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Ernesto  Rossi  played  it  several  times.  It 
was  after  a  performance  given  by  him  at  Bo- 
logna in  August,  1869,  that  Carducci  wrote  his 
essay  on  Calderon — an  essay  which  is  mistaken, 
as  Farinelli  points  out,  in  its  general  interpre- 
tation and  in  certain  individual  facts  and  opin- 
ions, but  contains  none  the  less  many  just  and 
acute  remarks. 

I  have  reread  Ufe  is  a  Dream  in  these  last 
few  days,  in  order  that  I  might  follow  Farinelli 
more  closely.  And  I  have  been  greatly  disap- 
pointed. 

It  was  well  known,  even  before  the  publica- 
tion of  Farinelli's  book,  that  the  plot  of  the 
drama  is  not  original,  and  that  there  is  nothing 
original  in  the  philosophic  or  mystic  concept 
which  gives  it  character.  New  and  great  works 
are  sometimes  written,  to  be  sure,  on  ancient 
themes  and  m>i;hs:  famous  instances  are  to  be 
found  in  all  literatures.  But  the  drama  of 
Calderon  is  almost  entirely  lacking  in  construc- 
tive psychology.  The  conversion  of  Prince  Sigis- 
mund  when  he  wakes,   as   he   thinks,   from   his 


CALDERON  301 

dream  of  power — the  event  which  should  have 
been  made  the  central  point  of  the  drama — is 
as  sudden  and  miraculous  as  the  conversion  of 
any  fabled  saint.  The  beast  turns  human  all  at 
once;  the  ferocious  creature  becomes  courteous 
and  generous;  the  savage  stands  forth  as  a  com- 
pendium of  Christian  virtues.  As  Farinelli 
says: 

It  is  precisely  this  sudden  intervention  of  the  super- 
human in  the  human  that  offends  us  in  the  play.  Such  in- 
exorable suppression  of  all  development  in  the  character  of 
the  protagonist,  such  disregard  of  nature,  makes  the  human 
spirit  merely  the  slave  of  a  thesis,  of  a  doctrine. 

That  is  precisely  the  point.  Calderon  wrote 
his  drama  in  order  to  teach  a  moral  lesson. 

The  plot  is  of  course  familiar.  A  certain  king 
of  Poland,  Basilio,  an  old  chatterer  swollen  with 
fantastic  science,  has  a  son,  Sigismund,  who  is 
destined,  according  to  the  horoscope,  to  prove  a 
rascal.  Basilio  therefore  has  the  child  impris- 
oned in  a  tower  on  a  remote  mountain,  under  the 
care  of  another  pedantic  old  man,  Clotaldo,  who 
keeps  the  boy  from  contact  with  other  human 
beings,  and  in  ignorance  of  his  identity.  But 
when  the  boy  grows  up,  the  father  takes  it  into 
his  head  to  bring  him  out  in  order  to  see  whether 
or  not  the  astrologers  were  right.  They  give 
the  youth  an  opiate — an  old  prescription,  well 
known  to  the  author  of  the  Arabian  Nights  and 


302  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

to  Boccaccio — and  carry  him  into  a  room  in  the 
royal  palace.  When  he  wakes  and  finds  out  who 
he  is,  he  goes  into  a  fury,  and  maltreats  those 
who  come  into  his  presence.  He  throws  a  man 
out  of  a  window,  insults  his  doting  father,  and 
all  but  kills  his  tutor  Clotaldo.  He  is  given  an- 
other sleeping  potion,  and  reawakes  as  a  prisoner 
in  his  tower.  He  is  told  that  he  has  been  dream- 
ing, and  he  believes  it.  He  reels  off  a  rosary  of 
phrases  on  the  idea  that  life  is  a  dream  and  that 
dreaming  is  life,  and  becomes  instantly  a  resigned 
and  repentant  model  of  Christian  humility.  King 
Basilio  decides  to  abdicate  in  favor  of  the  Duke 
of  Moscow,  a  foreigner ;  but  the  army  revolts,  and 
soldiers  break  into  the  tower,  liberate  Sigismund, 
and  hail  him  as  king.  He  thinks  he  is  dreaming 
again,  and  for  a  moment  he  hesitates.  But  then 
a  military  fury  seizes  him;  and  he  sets  forth. 
He  declares  war  on  his  father,  conquers  him,  par- 
dons him,  rescues  a  damsel,  chooses  a  wife  forth- 
with, and  ends  his  career  with  a  final  volley  of 
sententiousness. 

With  this  plot  there  is  interwoven  a  second 
and  minor  one  which  combines  the  barbarian 
themes  of  the  daughter  recognized  by  her  un- 
known father,  and  the  abandoned  mistress  who 
finally  marries  her  fugitive  lover.  The  public 
demanded  a  little  complexity,  and  the  ladies  de- 
manded a  little  love — and  there  had  to  be  at  least 
two  heroines  to  make  it  a  fashionable  tale. 


CALDERON  303 

But  the  persons  of  the  drama,  whether  men  or 
women,  have  no  life,  no  spiritual  complications, 
no  tragic  accents  or  impulses.  They  utter  a 
series  of  chilly  conceits  and  pedantic  maxims; 
they  give  us  sermons  or  madrigals.  Clotaldo,  by 
way  of  informing  us  that  he  is  going  to  fire  a 
pistol,  speaks  thus : 

.  .  .  Aquesta  pistola,  aspid 
de  metal,  escupira 
el  veneno  penetrante 
de  dos  balas,  cuyo  fuego 
sera  escandalo  del  aire.^ 

Sigismund  compliments  Estrella  thus: 

jQue  dejais  que  hacer  al  sol, 
si  OS  levantais  con  el  dia  ? 
Dadme  a  besar  vuestra  mano, 
en  cuya  copa  de  nieve 
el  aura  candores  bebe.^ 

The  whole  drama  is  in  this  tone.  Hyperboles 
and  aphorisms,  conceits  and  antitheses,  puns  and 
banality.  The  famous  soliloquy  of  Sigismund 
ends  thus: 

4  Que  es  la  vida?  un  frenesi; 
I  Que  es  la  vida  ?  una  ilusion, 
una  sombra,  una  ficcion, 

*  "This  pistol,  an  asp  of  metal,  will  spit  forth  the  piercing 
poison  of  two  bullets,  whose  fire  will  astonish  the  air." 

'  "What  do  you  leave  for  the  sun  to  do,  if  you  arise  with  the 
dawn?  Grant  that  I  kiss  your  hand,  in  whose  snowy  cup  the 
breeze  drinks  whiteness." 


804  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

y  el  mayor  bien  es  pequeno; 
que  toda  la  vida  es  sueiio, 
y  los  suenos  sueiio  son.^ 

The  mechanical  artificiahty  of  Calderon  does 
not  escape  Farinelli: 

The  author  designs  and  builds  without  inner  compulsion. 
The  crystallized  thought  remains  dense  and  unstirred. 
There  is  no  flow  of  life-blood  in  the  drama.  The  words 
rise  dryly;  they  never  come  eagerly  or  with  a  precipitate 
rush,  and  they  yield  themselves  tamely  to  the  skillful 
arrangement  and  intention  of  the  artist.  Simplicity  is  gone, 
selection  governs.  The  commonplace  is  suppressed,  instinct 
is  slain,  ornament  and  decoration  are  sought  above  all  else. 
The  poet  forgets  to  mould  the  living  clay  spontaneously. 
Affectation  becomes  nature.  In  this  drama,  which  deals 
with  eternal  human  destiny,  there  are  no  great  eternal 
utterances.  The  over-emphasis  of  the  dialogue  is  on  a  par 
with  its  dialectic  subtlety.  A  persistent  play  of  logic  chills 
the  glow  of  the  imagination.  Every  phrase  is  passed 
through  the  sieve  of  reflection.  The  rigid  discipline  of 
thought  humiliates  and  ousts  mere  human  feeling.  The 
poet  calculates,  measures,  ordains,  divides,  disposes. 

So  far  as  thought  is  concerned,  the  drama  con- 
tains merely  repetitions  and  amplifications  of 
the  very  ancient  idea  that  life  is  a  dream.  So 
far  as  poetry  is  concerned — ^there  is  none.  The 
search  for  poetry  reveals  this  one  bit  of  ingenuous 
cynicism,  which  some  follower  of  Nietzsche 
might  take  for  his  motto: 

Nada  me  parece  justo 

en  siendo  contra  mi  gusto.^ 

*"What  is  life?  A  frenzy.  What  is  life?  An  illusion,  a 
shadow,  a  fiction,  and  the  greatest  happiness  is  small;  for  all 
life  is  a  dream,  and  dreams  are  a  dream." 

*  "Nothing  seems  to  me  just  if  it  be  contrary  to  my  liking." 


CALDERON  305 

The  pessimist  a  outrance  might  perhaps  pre- 
fer this  couplet: 

Pues  el  delito  mayor 

del  hombre  es  haber  nacido.^ 

But  of  the  true  lyric  there  is  not  a  trace.  Not 
a  single  new  and  lovely  image  could  I  find  in 
these  thousands  of  lines.  There  is  perhaps  a 
breath  of  poetry  in  this  paraphrase  for  the  sun- 
set: 

Antes  que  la  obscura  sombra 

sepulte  los  rayos  de  oro 

entre  verdinegras  ondas.^ 

But  even  here  there  is  a  glimpse  of  a  conceit 
which  is  by  no  means  new. 

Calderon  had  neither  the  desire  nor  the  ability 
to  write  as  a  pure  poet.  In  the  theatre,  indeed, 
pure  poetry  is  but  an  intruder.  Either  the 
drama  kills  it,  or  else  it  kills  the  drama.  Calderon 
sought  to  please  his  audience — and  he  succeeded, 
as  the  records  amply  prove.  He  sought  to  teach 
a  moral  lesson  to  the  grandees  of  the  earth,  to 
picture  a  prince  converted  to  Christian  behavior 
by  the  discovery  of  the  mystic  commonplace  that 
life  is  a  shadow,  an  illusion,  nothing. 

It  would  be  labor  lost  to  seek  hidden  or  lofty 
meanings  in  the  play.  It  does  not  illustrate  even 
that  rigid  application  of  a  single  principle  which 

*  "For  the  greatest  sin  of  man  is  in  having  been  born." 

*  "Before  the  dark  shadow  buries  the  rays  of  gold  amid  green- 
black  waves." 


306  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

leads  at  times  to  magnificent  absurdities.  Two 
theories  are  superposed  one  on  the  other:  all  is 
a  dream;  yet  one  should  act,  and  act  worthily. 
But  the  first  thesis  implies  the  annihilation  of 
action;  and  the  second  thesis  by  implication  de- 
nies the  first.  If  hfe  is  a  dream  and  a  fiction, 
why  should  we  act  ?  And  if  we  must  act,  and  act 
as  Christians  rather  than  beasts,  we  are  forced 
to  conclude  that  there  is  something  certain  in 
the  world,  that  life  has  a  purpose,  that  choice  is 
inevitable.  But  if  you  thus  deny  the  first  thesis, 
you  take  away  the  whole  imaginative  and  moral 
coloring  of  the  drama,  and  you  have  merely  a  dis- 
cursive elegiac  exhortation,  for  which  a  few 
phrases  would  have  sufficed.  If  you  accept  the 
common  Christian  thesis,  the  drama  loses  back- 
ground and  relief,  and  becomes  an  ordinary  play 
in  which  the  sudden  and  utter  transformation 
of  the  protagonist  has  not  the  slightest  motiva- 
tion. The  two  theses  are  interwoven  not  by 
logical  but  by  theatrical  necessity.  Life  is  a 
Dream  might  then  be  defined,  in  the  last  analysis, 
as  a  pair  of  old  and  contradictory  ideas  combined 
in  old  and  lifeless  forms. 

Farinelli  is  perfectly  well  aware  of  the  ideo- 
logical and  artistic  bankruptcy  of  Calderon: 

The  true  drama  lies  outside  the  action  of  the  play.  It 
consists  in  the  impossibility  of  reconciling  the  doctrine  of 
the  nullity  of  life  with  the  demands  of  life  itself,  the  world 
of  shadows  with  the  concrete  world  of  this  our  earthy  which 


CALDERON  307 

leads  us  on  from  stress  to  stress,  from  pain  to  pain.  A 
mere  doctrine  pretends  that  it  can  absorb  the  practical 
experience  of  life,  seeks  even  to  make  itself  identical  with 
life;  but  its  endeavor  is  arrogant  and  hopeless.  The  chasm 
remains.  The  idea  that  life  is  a  dream  falls  into  emptiness, 
yet  Calderon  does  not  realize  it.  He  moves  his  phantoms 
hither  and  yon  in  a  dream-world  remote  alike  from  nature 
and  from  truth. 

Quite  so:  even  in  the  dream-world  there  is  a 
certain  law  of  nature,  a  certain  truth.  For  the 
dream-world  is  purely  an  artistic  creation.  And 
the  man  who  does  not  recognize  the  power  of 
that  truth  and  the  reign  of  that  law  is  beyond 
the  pale  of  poetry. 


XXIII 
MAETERLINCK  ^ 


Let  a  solemn  man  with  a  black  cat  in  his 
hands  lead  you  into  a  dark  room.  Let  him  be- 
gin patiently  to  rub  the  cat's  fur  the  wrong  way, 
singing  a  nonsense  song  sotto  voce.  If  you  don't 
fall  asleep  too  soon  you  will  see  sparks  fly  from 
the  cat's  fur.  Then  the  man  will  begin  to  talk 
to  you  about  sparks.  Si^eaking  in  the  low  tone 
that  is  used  in  incantations,  he  will  tell  you  that 
sparks  are  products  of  animal  electricity,  but 
that  they  may  well  be  reflections  of  the  fires  of 
Hell — unless  forsooth  they  be  glimmerings  of  a 
celestial  illumination.  The  cat,  in  dread  uncer- 
tainty, will  purr  a  little,  and  every  now  and  then 
will  venture  a  languid  meow  or  will  spit  in  dis- 
may. The  solemn  man,  unmoved,  will  go  on 
talking  in  his  white  and  specious  voice.  He  will 
direct  your  glance  to  the  pale  window,  and  try 
to  persuade  you  that  the  points  of  light  out  yon- 
der are  stars  lost  in  the  sky,  or  else  will-o'-the- 

*  Written  d  propos  of  MaeteJ-linck's  I'Hdte  Inconnu,  Paris,  1917. 


MAETERLINCK  309 

wisps  of  ancient  cemeteries,  or  possibly  fireflies 
rising  from  the  damp  grass;  and  he  will  finally 
suggest  that  fireflies  may  well  be  stars  of  the 
infernal  world,  and  that  stars  may  well  be  will- 
o'-the-wisps  of  the  world  above,  and  so  on  ad 
infinitum. 

The  solemn  man  is  Maurice  IVIaeterlinck.  The 
ambiguous  and  labyrinthine  discourses,  inter- 
spersed with  the  meowings  of  the  cat,  are  the 
books  of  Maurice  IMaeterlinck.  Such,  at  least, 
is  the  impression  his  books  have  made  on  me  for 
some  time  past.  And  that  impression  has  been 
strengthened  by  the  reading  of  his  recently  pub- 
lished Unknown  Guest,  a  little  breviary  of  sub- 
liminal marvels. 

Maeterlinck's  specialty  in  the  field  of  contem- 
porary literature  is  the  manipulation  of  mystery 
for  the  use  of  delicate  souls.  He  creates  little 
enigmas  in  order  that  he  may  provide  three  or 
four  equally  possible  solutions.  He  stirs  up  lit- 
tle anguishes,  he  plays  with  quivers  and  shivers, 
he  prepares  dark  recesses  that  he  may  walk 
through  them  with  a  lantern  in  his  hand  and  his 
finger  on  his  lips.  He  invents  terrible  problems 
— and  solves  them  with  the  utmost  amiability. 
He  is  a  sort  of  austere  Puck,  a  Puritan  clown, 
a  religious  gnome.  Real  mysteries,  the  true  and 
terrible  mysteries,  are  too  much  for  delicate 
souls;  they  cannot  swallow  them  whole.  The 
mystery  of  dogmas,  the  mystery  of  our  universal 


310  FOUR  ANJ)  TWENTY  MINDS 

ignorance,  and  the  mystery  of  our  inevitable 
death  are  too  hard  and  too  strong  for  the  souls 
of  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  can  spare  only  odd 
moments  for  metaphysical  anxiety. 

Maeterlinck  breaks  up  and  subdivides  his  mys- 
teries. He  distributes  them  in  digestible  doses; 
he  makes  them  into  biscuits,  cakes,  and  candies, 
he  sweetens  them  with  the  sugar  of  poetr\%  and 
serves  them  up  in  the  pastry  of  literature.  Thus 
the  mysteries  of  life,  of  the  spirit,  and  of  the 
universe,  disguised  and  powdered,  thinned  and 
triturated,  appear  presentable  and  edible  to  men 
of  fashion,  to  Anglo-Saxon  ladles,  to  young  oc- 
cultists, and  to  German  Frdulein;  and  the  books 
of  Maeterlinck  take  their  place  on  the  tea- 
table  between  the  steaming  samovar  and  the 
cigarette  box. 


But  though  his  books  are  full  of  mystery,  there 
is  nothing  mysterious  in  the  financial  success  of 
this  cosmopolitan  Belgian  who,  born  at  Ghent  of 
a  Flemish  family,  writes  in  French,  publishes  by 
preference  in  English,  and  is  studied  chiefly  in 
German.  Paris  gave  him  his  reputation,  through 
the  famous  essay  of  Mirbeau,  published  in  1890. 
The  English  and  the  Americans  pay  him  best  for 
his  magazine  articles.    The  Germans,  naturally, 


MAETERLINCK  311 

have  taken  him  most  seriously:  they  have  de- 
voted several  books  to  him,  and  have  written 
treatises  on  that  which  in  their  Idndly  condescen- 
sion they  term  his  philosophy. 

Polydore  Marie  Bernard  Maeterlinck  went  to 
a  Jesuit  school,  and  later  studied  and  practiced 
law.  The  Jesuits,  to  be  sure,  are  not  very  strong 
on  mystery.  The  more  intransigent  they  are  in 
matters  of  religion,  the  more  accommodating  and 
mundane  they  are  in  school  and  in  life.  But  it 
was  perhaps  from  the  Jesuits  that  Maeterlinck 
got  that  habit  of  softening  down  and  smoothing 
away  asperities,  that  rather  sickish  sweetness 
that  is  almost  unctuous,  that  fondness  for  unfin- 
ished sentences  uttered  in  a  low  voice,  that  con- 
tinual distinguishing  and  redistinguishing,  that 
saying  without  saying  anything,  that  love  of 
nuances,  that  silent  walking  on  the  chemin  de 
velours.  Some  of  his  books  are  but  the  casuistry 
of  mysticism  clad  in  a  dress  suit. 

He  did  not  long  continue  the  practice  of  law, 
and  yet  he  has  retained  certain  forensic  traits: 
the  ability  to  see  only  what  he  wants  to  see,  the 
art  of  insinuations  withdrawn  as  soon  as  they 
are  made,  a  quibbling  type  of  argumentation,  a 
tendency  to  undertake  unsound  causes  and  to 
indulge  in  elegant  and  complicated  disquisitions, 
the  habit  of  methodological  procedure,  the  con- 
stant repetition  of  the  very  fact  that  he  is  seek- 
ing to  establish  as  if  it  were  an  element  of  evi- 


312  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

dence.  He  often  seems  to  be  the  lawyer  of  the 
subconscious,  the  attorney  of  the  spirit-world. 

In  1886,  when  he  went  to  Paris,  Symbolism 
was  in  full  swing — and  he  became  a  Symbolist. 
Symbolism  is  a  brief,  magnificent  movement  in 
French  poetry,  created  by  the  genius  of  three  or 
four  real  Frenchmen,  but  developed  and  ex- 
ploited by  Belgians,  Flemings,  North  Americans, 
and  Greeks.  The  Flemings  in  particular — suf- 
fice it  to  mention  the  names  of  ^laeterlinck  and 
Verhaeren,  both  of  them  of  Teutonic  stock,  and 
popular  in  Germany — succeeded  in  turning  Sym- 
bolism to  their  own  great  advantage.  While 
Rimbaud  was  dying  forgotten  in  a  hospital  at 
Marseilles,  while  Verlaine  was  dragging  his  pov- 
erty and  his  diseases  from  one  hospital  to  an- 
other, while  Mallarme  was  giving  English  lessons 
to  ward  off  starvation,  these  Belgians  were  win- 
ning glory — and  Maeterlinck  was  winning 
wealth. 

Maeterlinck  was  revealed  to  the  hydra-headed 
public  through  a  generous  and  exaggerated  es- 
say by  Octave  Mirbeau.  Mirbeau  was  precisely 
the  opposite  of  ^laeterlinck  in  talent  and  in  na- 
ture, but  he  was  carried  off  his  feet  by  his  first 
reading  of  the  Princess  Maleiiie,  and  declared 
that  the  unknown  beginner  was  greater  than 
Shakespeare. 

Yet  nothing  could  be  less  Shakespearean  than 
the  plays  of  Maeterlinck.    Shakespeare  is  virile, 


MAETERLINCK  313 

solid,  full-blooded,  concrete;  he  can  jest  and 
laugh ;  his  spectres  are  even  more  substantial  than 
his  living  men.  The  father  of  Hamlet  is  per- 
fectly capable  of  knocking  Bernardo  and  Mar- 
cellus  down  when  they  try  to  stop  him ;  the  ghost 
of  Banquo  is  more  vindictive  than  any  living 
person.  The  characters  of  the  early  plays  of 
Maeterlinck,  on  the  contrary,  are  paler  and  more 
empty  than  the  phantoms  they  pursue,  and  the 
spirits  that  disturb  them  are  but  the  deliquescent 
reflections  of  an  invisible  silence.  If  the  ingenu- 
ous Mirbeau,  instead  of  suggesting  Shakespeare, 
had  read  the  plays  of  Villiers  de  ITsle  Adam — 
Accel,  for  example — and  had  known  that  Villiers 
was  the  first  prominent  writer  visited  by  Maeter- 
linck in  Paris,  he  would  have  perceived  more 
clearly  the  origins  of  Maeterlinck's  drama  of 
metaphysical  marionettes.  Later  on  Maeterlinck 
himself  grew  tired  of  f antastications  sobbed  forth 
in  a  dim  light  and  ending  in  the  chatter  of  de- 
lirious idiots.  In  The  Blue  Bird  he  tried  his 
hand  at  the  folktale,  with  much  less  wit  than  our 
own  Gozzi;  in  Monna  Vanna  he  sank  into  the 
drama  of  Fate,  with  less  gorgeousness  than  our 
own  d'Annunzio, 


in 


Remy  de  Gourmont,  in  a  moment  of  kindli- 
ness, wrote  an  essay  on  the  originality  of  Maeter- 


314  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

linck.  He  too  was  bewitched  by  that  atmosphere 
of  magic  half-shadows  full  of  a  tragic-ascetic 
whispering.  But  in  reality  Maeterlinck  is  a 
translator,  an  adapter,  a  popularizer.  He  trans- 
lated Novalis  from  the  German,  Ruysbroeck 
from  the  Flemish,  Ford  and  Shakespeare  from 
the  English.  In  the  Treasure  of  the  Humble 
and  in  the  various  Double  Gardens  and  Buried 
Temples  that  followed  it,  he  adapted  the  religious 
mysticism  of  the  primitives  and  the  lay  mysticism 
of  Carlyle  and  Emerson.  In  the  Life  of  the  Bee 
and  the  Intelligence  of  Flowers  he  popularized 
the  scientific  manner  of  Fabre.  Of  late,  follow- 
ing the  tastes  of  his  Anglo-Saxon  and  German 
clientele,  he  has  started  dispensing  the  marvels 
and  novelties  of  occultism  and  psychical  research, 
not  without  a  dash  of  spiritism  and  a  sprinkling 
of  theosophy.  He  began  with  a  book  on  Death, 
which  I  read  patiently,  though  I  found  nothing 
in  it  that  was  worth  remembering.  Now  he  con- 
tinues with  his  Unknown  Guest,  and  my  patience 
is  worn  out. 

In  this  book,  a  collection  of  three  or  fotir 
magazine  articles  originally  published  in  Eng- 
lish, he  talks  of  phantoms  of  persons  living  or 
dead,  of  psychometry  (communication  with  a 
dead  or  distant  person  by  holding  in  the  hand 
something  once  touched  by  that  person),  of 
second  sight,  and  of  the  horses  of  Elberfeldt.  I 
have  not  the  slightest  objection  to  the  careful 


MAETERLINCK  315 

study  of  such  problems;  indeed,  I  have  studied 
them  myself.  But  there  are  only  two  methods 
by  which  they  may  be  studied  to  advantage:  by 
the  collection  of  data,  carefully  observed,  con- 
trolled, and  tested;  or  by  the  formation  of  new 
and  specific  hypotheses  with  regard  to  the  causes 
and  varieties  of  these  data.  But  Maeterlinck 
follows  neither  of  these  methods.  He  does  noth- 
ing that  is  really  useful  either  to  science  or  to 
thought.  He  does  not  adduce  a  single  new  fact : 
once  in  a  while  he  cites  a  fact  that  is  perfectly 
familiar.  As  to  theoiy,  he  gives  way  unashamed 
to  the  vagaries  of  his  incurable  ambiguity. 

He  seems  to  want  to  believe  in  a  mysterious 
second  soul  within  us,  the  reflection  of  a  hidden 
universal  soul ;  but  at  the  same  time  he  advances 
the  arguments  of  a  pettifogging  materialist.  He 
finds  some  good  in  the  beliefs  of  spiritism;  but 
he  seeks  to  disregard  them  as  far  as  possible. 
He  does  not  scorn  theosophy;  but  he  avoids  it, 
and  lumps  it  with  all  other  religions.  He  is  re- 
ligious ;  but  he  recognizes  no  authority  save  that 
of  science.  He  tries  to  give  himself  the  air  of 
a  scientist ;  but  he  loses  himself  in  a  sea  of  vague 
sophistication.  You  do  not  know  whether  he 
believes  in  mediums,  in  general  telepathy,  or  in 
the  intervention  of  spirits.  He  would  like  to  be- 
lieve, but  he  is  afraid  to  believe;  and  with  all 
his  scruples  and  reservations,  with  all  his 
hypocritical  attempts  at  objectivity,  he  ends  with 


316  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

phrases  such  as  this:  "II  est  fort  possible  et  meme 
assez  probable  que  les  morts  nous  entourent, 
puisqu'il  est  impossible  que  les  morts  ne  vivent 
pas." 

In  short,  his  book  gives  the  impression  of  a 
merry-go-round  of  useless  chatter  about  ambigu- 
ous mysteries.  The  only  thing  that  is  clear  is 
that  he  is  earning  money  by  means  of  this  chat- 
ter. The  only  thing  he  has  done  that  called  for 
personal  exertion  was  to  go  to  Elberfeldt  to  see 
the  educated  horses  of  Herr  Krall.  But  his  visit 
adds  nothing  to  what  we  had  learned  from  the 
reports  of  the  psychologists  who  had  preceded 
him.  And  ]\Iaeterlinck  himself  destroys  all  the 
significance  which  the  calculations  of  the  German 
steeds  might  be  thought  to  have  as  a  proof  of 
animal  intelligence,  by  pointing  out  that  human 
calculating  prodigies  are  in  general  children  or 
half-witted  persons  who  guess  mathematical  re- 
sults by  a  strange  sort  of  intuition,  but  do  not 
carry  through  real  mathematical  operations. 
What  is  more,  Maeterlinck  (who  has  read 
Shakespeare,  it  would  seem )  ought  to  have  recog- 
nized that  the  horses  of  Elberfeldt  are  not  a  nov- 
elty. At  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  a  cer- 
tain Bankes  exhibited  in  London,  before  St. 
Paul's,  a  horse  so  well  trained  that  he  could  count 
coins,  and  could  carry  things  to  a  spectator  whose 
name  his  master  pronounced.  Shakespeare  re- 
fers to  him  in  Loves  Labour  Lost. 


MAETERLINCK  317 

Mediocre  enough  as  a  poet,  Maeterlinck  has 
not  even  any  great  aptitude  for  metaphysics, 
whatever  his  French  and  German  admirers  may 
say.  He  is  a  parlor  occultist,  a  moralist  for  old 
ladies,  a  syrupy  philosopher,  a  friar  without  faith, 
a  scientist  without  clearness,  a  poet  without  im- 
agination, a  casuist  for  idle  consciences,  a  fakir 
of  facile  marvels.  To  read  him  after  reading  a 
great  philosopher  is  like  smoking  opium  after 
climbing  a  mountain.  To  read  him  after  read- 
ing a  great  poet  is  like  drinking  a  cup  of  camo- 
mile after  a  goblet  of  old  wine. 


XXIV 
GIOVANNI  PAPINI  ^ 


Giovanni  Papini  does  not  need  to  be  intro- 
Quced  to  our  readers.  Every  one  knows,  his 
friends  with  even  more  certainty  than  his  ene- 
mies, that  he  is  the  ugliest  man  in  Italy  (if  in- 
deed he  deserves  the  name  of  man  at  all),  so  re- 
pulsive that  Mirabeau  would  seem  in  comparison 
an  academy  model,  a  Discobolus,  an  Apollo 
Belvedere.  And  since  the  face  is  the  mirror  of 
the  soul,  as  the  infinite  wisdom  of  the  race  in- 
forms us  in  one  of  its  proverbial  condensations 
of  experience,  no  one  will  be  surprised  to  learn 
that  this  Papini  is  the  scoundrel  of  literature,  the 
blackguard  of  journalism,  the  Barabbas  of  art, 
the  thug  of  philosophy,  the  bully  of  politics,  the 
Apache  of  culture,  and  that  he  is  inextricably 
involved  in  all  the  enterprises  of  the  intellectual 
underworld.  It  is  also  well  known  that  he  lives 
sumptuously  and  gorgeously,  and  of  course  like 

*  Written   soon   after  the  publication  of  Stroncature    ("Slash- 
ings"), Florence,  1916. 

318 


GIOVANNI  PAPINI  319 

a  Sybarite,  in  an  inaccessible  castle;  and  that 
he  derives  his  usual  means  of  sustenance  from 
theft,  blackmail,  and  highway  robbery.  We  may 
add,  though  it  is  scarcely  necessary,  that  his 
favorite  food  is  the  flesh  of  fools  and  his  favorite 
drink  is  warm,  steaming  human  blood. 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  this 
creature  is  the  worst  of  all  the  churls  and  boors 
that  feed  on  Italian  soil :  rumor  has  it  that  he  has 
sworn  a  Carthaginian  hatred  against  every  past 
or  future  treatise  on  good  behavior.  This  shame- 
ful rascal  goes  even  so  far  as  to  say  what  he 
actually  thinks.  Worse  still,  he  has  the  audacity 
to  turn  on  the  critics  when  they  annoy  him : 

Cet  animal  est  tres  mechant: 
Quand  on  I'attaque  il  se  defend ! 

This  Giovanni  Papini,  this  sinister  chameleon 
of  the  zoology  of  the  spirit,  has  just  published  a 
new  book,  a  thick  book,  an  abominable  book.  If 
our  eyes  were  not  veiled  by  that  natural  kindli- 
ness which  always  dominates  a  well-bred  soul, 
and  if  our  severest  words  were  not  shut  deep 
down  in  our  throat  and  our  ink-well  by  the  prac- 
tical necessity  of  defending  a  colleague,  we 
should  be  tempted  to  say  that  not  even  in  the 
most  decadent  and  vituperative  periods  of  our 
literature  has  any  one  ever  applied  such  a  bound- 
less flow  of  ribald  and  perfidious  terms  to  men 
who  in  spite  of  their  moments  of  weakness  (due, 


320  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

no  doubt,  to  the  influence  of  Homer's  nods), 
honor  the  name  and  genius  of  Italy  among  our- 
selves and  before  the  world.  Disgust  assails  us, 
nausea  overwhehns  us,  scorn  conquers  us,  indig- 
nation stifles  us,  wrath  shakes  us,  and  rage  con- 
sumes us  when  we  see  this  miscreant  of  the  pen, 
this  bandit  of  paper,  this  outlaw  of  ink,  move  to 
the  assault  of  persons  whom  the  country  honors, 
universities  approve,  academies  reward,  foreign- 
ers admire,  and  the  bourgeoisie  respects  without 
knowing  why. 

Who  can  witness  such  an  atrocious  spectacle 
without  shuddering?  Who  can  be  content  to 
stand  aside  with  folded  arms?  Never  shall  it  be 
said  that  filibusters  and  Hbelers  may  devastate 
with  impunity  the  hortos  conclusos,  the  gardens 
of  Armida,  the  ivory  towers  and  the  terrestrial 
paradises  of  our  literature.  Our  voice  is  weak, 
and  modest  is  our  strength.  But  we  rise  to 
protest  (with  dignity,  with  nobihty,  but  with 
energy)  against  this  shameful  degeneration  of 
criticism. 


II 


The  volume  in  question,  which  the  author 
shamelessly  entitles  Slashings,  opens  appropri- 
ately with  several  pages  of  "Boasts,"  in  which 
Papini  insinuates  that  indignation  as  well  as  love 
may  lead  to  knowledge,  since  only  our  enemies 


GIOVANNI  PAPINI  321 

clearly  perceive  our  defects  and  our  failings. 
But  this  Tamerlane  of  literary  warfare  does  not 
keep  to  the  promise  of  his  title.  Of  his  twenty- 
four  chapters,  in  fact,  there  are  only  eleven  that 
can  fairly  be  called  "slashings."  The  other  thir- 
teen are  either  eulogies  of  men  alive  or  dead,  or 
cordial  presentations  of  men  famous  or  unknown. 
And  this  again  is  scandalous,  and  sheds  the 
clearest  electric  light  on  the  fundamental  dis- 
honesty of  Papini.  Any  one  who  has  been  so 
unfortunate  as  to  spend  five  lire  in  the  hope  of 
witnessing  a  massacre  (and  in  view  of  the  com- 
mon human  instincts  one  cannot  deny  a  priori 
that  such  a  purchase  is  possible)  would  be  justi- 
fied in  suing  the  slasher  for  an  attempt  to  collect 
money  under  false  pretenses.  For  this  wretched 
book  contains  pages  so  steeped  in  affection  and 
so  warm  with  love — and  this  not  only  in  the  chap- 
ters in  which  he  is  talking  of  his  friends — that  it 
is  hard  to  believe  them  written  by  the  same 
murderous  hand  that  wrote  the  other  pages.  If 
the  men  praised  were  acquaintances  of  Papini, 
the  phenomenon  might  easily  be  explained  as  a 
case  of  bribery  or  blackmail.  But  in  almost  all 
these  instances  the  men  are  dead,  and  in  many 
cases  they  have  been  dead  so  long  that  Papini 
cannot  possibly  have  known  them.  We  confess 
that  we  are  powerless  to  solve  this  enigma,  and 
we  console  ourselves  with  the  thought — an 
ancient  and  excellent  idea — that  the  soul  of  man 


322  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

is  an  abyss  where  lights  and  shadows  mingle  in 
conflict,  to  the  confusion  of  the  psychologists. 

But  we  must  not  let  this  impudent  Proteus 
deceive  us.  We  must  not  forget  that  he  spends 
more  than  fifty  pages  in  an  onslaught  on  that 
Benedetto  Croce,  whom  the  young  men  of  forty- 
five  and  fifty  years  regard  as  their  standard  and 
their  lighthouse,  that  Croce  whom  all  revere — 
from  the  Oiornale  d'ltalia  to  the  Senate,  from 
Pescasseroli  to  Texas — as  the  ultimate  intuition 
and  expression  of  the  truth.  We  must  not  for- 
get that  this  Zoilus  in  the  form  of  Thersites 
allows  himself  to  attack  Gabriele  d'Annunzio, 
our  great  national  poet,  novelist,  dramatist,  and 
orator,  our  champion  intellectual  importer,  who, 
like  Ferrero,  his  only  rival  in  this  respect,  lives 
on  the  results  of  a  most  profitable  exportation. 
In  this  same  book  he  maltreats  that  Luciano 
Zuccoli  whom  all  Italian  ladies  adore;  that  Sem 
Benelli  whom  all  Italian  second  galleries  have 
applauded;  that  Guido  Mazzoni,  permanent  sec- 
retary of  the  Academy  of  the  Crusca,  whose 
Bunch  of  Keys  has  admitted  him  into  the  Golden 
Book  of  Poetry;  that  Emilio  Cecchi  who  will 
long  remain  the  dearest  hope  of  young  Italian 
criticism;  that  Romain  Rolland  who  has  under- 
taken to  write  a  twenty-volume  novel,  and  will 
sooner  or  later  be  declared  an  honorary  citizen  of 
Switzerland.  The  devouring  hunger  of  this 
hyena  is  so  boundless  that  he  has  even  attacked 


GIOVANNI  PAPJNI  323 

unreal  beings,  imagined  by  the  fancy  of  peoples 
and  of  poets.  Incredible  though  it  may  seem, 
there  are  pages  here  in  which,  with  an  unprece- 
dented refinement  of  malignity,  he  tears  to  bits 
the  learned  Dr.  Faust  and  the  melancholy  Prince 
Hamlet. 

The  case  is  all  the  clearer  since  the  men  whom 
he  praises  are  themselves  calumniators:  Swift, 
who  calumniated  man;  Weininger,  who  calumni- 
ated woman;  Cervantes,  who  mocked  idealism; 
Remy  de  Gourmont,  who  performed  the  autopsy 
on  Philistine  thought;  Tristan  Corbiere,  who 
ridiculed  the  whole  of  humanity,  including  him- 
self. 

Giovanni  Papini  knows  only  hatred.  His  one 
motive  is  wrath.  He  deals  only  in  invective;  he 
delights  only  in  blasphemy.  He  has  gathered 
the  filth  of  Aretino,  the  drivel  of  Annibal  Caro, 
the  sinister  humor  of  Antonfrancesco  Doni,  has 
beaten  up  this  mess  of  infection  with  the  whip 
of  Baretti,  and  then  tries  to  make  us  swallow  it. 
But  we  writhe  in  revolt  against  the  drink,  for 
we,  like  the  child  of  Tasso,  desire  a  sweet  draught, 
especially  now  that  all  these  troubles  are  plung- 
ing the  world  into  the  darkness  of  grief. 

It  is  perfectly  right  that  boneheads  should  be 
given  a  drubbing,  that  undeserved  reputations 
should  be  reduced  to  their  true  level,  that  the 
mediocre  should  be  exposed,  that  bubbles  should 
be  pricked,  and  so  on.     That  is  all  right.     But 


324  FOUR  AND  TWENTY  MINDS 

this  is  not  the  way  it  should  be  done.  "And  the 
way  offends  me  still,"  as  the  Divine  Poet  makes 
Signora  Francesca  da  Rimini  remark. 

The  author  of  this  detestable  book  is  still 
young,  and  has  given  evidence  of  ability  to  do 
things  not  so  bad  as  this.  We  will  remind  him, 
therefore,  of  a  great  truth  which  our  fathers  have 
handed  down  to  us,  and  which  we  shall  entrust 
as  a  precious  thing  to  our  sons:  "Criticism  is 
easy,  but  art  is  difficult."  And  if  this  stubborn 
wretch  should  reply  that  even  criticism  may  be 
art,  and  should  persist  in  his  wickedness,  we  shall 
retort  with  a  saying  of  the  immortal  JNIanzoni,  a 
saying  that  is  somewhat  out  of  date,  but  still  con- 
venient: "Don't  worry,  poor  creature,  it  will 
take  more  than  you  to  turn  Milan  upside  down." 


FINIS 


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